
Book * n G 



'RESENTED liY 



I i 7.5 



V, 






o 

•■8 

CO 

o 



§"1 

o 




O C>0 

i s 



1^ 



,.«r* 



RELIGION AND SCIENCE; 

THE 

OX THE 

INFLUENCE OF SPIRIT UPON IMPONDERABLE 
ACTIENIC MOLECULAR SUBSTANCES, 



AND THE 



LIFE-FORCES OF MIND AND MATTER. 



(JEmbranrtg \\ |Ubicfo 

OF TIIB 

ADDRESS OF PROF. JOHX TYNDALL, LL.D., F.R.S., Etc., 

BEFORE THE BRITISH ASSOCIATION AT BELFAST, AUGUST 19, 1874, 

WITn ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE, THROUGH THE LAW OF "EVOLUTION," OF THE IMMOR- 
TALITY OF THE SOUL, ITS RELATIONS TO PHYSICAL LIFE. AND 
ACCOUNTABILITY TO THE DEITY. 



a 



BY THE AUTHOR OF 

'FIBRILIA AND FIBROUS MANUFACTURES," "THE ACTIEN THEORY, AND LETTERS ON 

A NEWLY DISCOVERED LAW IN PHYSICS, THE ORIGIN OF LIGHT AND 

HEAT, THE AUTOMATIC FORMATION OF COLOR," Bto. 



BOSTON: 

JAMES CAMBPELL. 

18 7 5. 



/? zr 



Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, 

By STEPHEN M. ALLEN, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. 






TO 

GEORGE BUCKHAM, Esq., 

THE UNCOMPROMISING SUPPORTER OF RELIGION, 

THE FRIEND OF SCIENCE; 

AND AN EARNEST BELIEVER THAT TRUTH IN EVERY FORM IS THE HIGHEST 

PROMOTER OF 

HUMAN KNOWLEDGE AND HAPPINESS, 

THROUGH THE INSPIRATIONAL TEACHINGS OF EITHER 

SCIENCE OR RELIGION; 

THIS VOLUME 

BY HIS FRIEND, 

THE AUTHOR. 



/ 



CONTENTS. 



ESSAY I. 

INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS IN MAN. 

Matter and Spirit: the Question of which takes Precedence 
a Vital One at the Present Time. —Whether a Supreme 
being 19 intended to be recognized by scientific teachers, 
or whether atheism lurks beneath, to be proclaimed on 
Future Occasions. — Molecular and Atomic Matter, and 
Their Relations to Animal Life and Evolution. — All 
People, either Savage or Civilized, from the Beginning 
of Time, have believed in some sort of Deity, the Immor- 
tality of the Soul, and in Rewards and Punishments.— 
Life-Forces in Matter borrow their Strength from Spirit. 

ESSAY II. 

RELIGION EVER SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 

Newton, Goethe, and Aristotle. — Education and General 
Experience enlarge instead of contract the Mind for 
the Comprehension of Specialties. — Naturalism and 
Theism. — God is all Things in Their Idea. — Love and 
Providence, Law and Wisdom. —If God is a Trinity, in that 
He is the Prototype of Man. 

ESSAY III. 

SPIRIT AND MATTER. 

An Impulse may be Inherent through Physical Man, and yet 
not be Material but Spiritual. —Deity Harmonious in His 
Work. — The Primeval Man. — Self-Conscious Spiritual 
Impulse. — The Brain and Intellect borrow their Motive 
Force from Spirit. — Soul and Intellect of Man point to 
Principles beyond. —What are Molecules and Atoms? — 
Their Expansion and Contraction. — The Shell of Mole- 
cules the Foundation of Physical Atoms or the Substance 
of Animal Fibre. 



IV CONTENTS. 

ESSAY IV. 

MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 

A Large Majority of True Scientists believe in Beligion. — 
The Earth's Light and Heat. — Old Theories Unreason- 
able and Inconsistent with God's Law of Uses. — No 
Reason or Proof of the Assumptions of Late Astronomers 
that the sun gives out the heat estimated by them. — 
Light may be generated in the Atmosphere as Heat 
and Cold may be produced. — Color a Condition, not a 
Fixed Law. 

ESSAY V. 

MECHANICAL EVOLUTION. 

Life-Force of Molecular Motion. — Spirit the Primary 
Author. — Democritus no Guide to Science though belle vtng 
in a Deity. — Epicurus a Better Teacher, though much 
defamed in his supposed Principles. — He adored the Gods, 
but in the Ordinary Fashion. — Lucretius and the Mechani- 
cal Shock of Atoms. — His Idea of Intelligent Design in the 
Constitution of Nature. — Democritus' Idea, that from 
Nothing comes Nothing. — The Creation by both Divine 
and Human Calculation must have had a Beginning. 

ESSAY VI. 

TRUTH AND SOPHISTRY. 

Spirit of the Middle Ages. — The Specialties of Socrates, 
Aristotle, and Others. — Science not retarded by Eeligion. 
— Fall of Eome and Other Cities attributed to Material 
and not Spiritual Causes. — Errors of Scientists of the 
Present Age. 

ESSAY VII. 
SCIENCE AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Professor Tyndall's Complaint of the Middle Ages. — A Draw- 
back to Scientific Progress. — One Thousand Years as 
eventful as any other equal length of tlme in the his- 
TORY of the World. — Alexander the Great to Belisarius. — 
Partition of the Eoman Empire to the Establishment of the 
Greek Empire. — Egypt, Syria, Persia, Eome. — The Gauls, 
Celts, and Britons. — Science did not perish in Eome 
through eeligious fanaticism. — the eomans established 
Slavery. — Oxford and Cambridge incorporated. 



CONTENTS. V 

ESSAY VIII. 

ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 

Protagoras the Atheistic Sophist. — Strain upon the Human 
Mind. — Geordano Bruno burned for Heresy. — Want of 
Charity in Sectarianism. — Christendom sick of the School 
of Philosophy. — Materialists disgusted with Their Own 
Work. — Craving for Unity. — Unity of Physical Forces. — 
A Keligious Spirit made place for Copernicus, Gassendi, 
and Atomic Constructions. 



ESSAY IX. 

MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 

The Connection between Spirit and Matter. — Electric Tele- 
graph. — Bishop Butler's Views. —Why will Vapor float in 
the Atmosphere ? — Why is the Theory of Undulation 
credited to young ? — why are corpuscles used for illus- 
TRATING Newton's Theory of Light when He used them 
only to illustrate colors ? — old conceptions relaxed. — 
Darwin's Origin of Species.— Moleschott's Views of Thought 
and Matter. —The Practical Man the Work of a Divine 
Law. — Fate has Weak Points. 



ESSAY X. 

SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 

The Present a Generation Peculiar to Itself. — The Princi- 
ples of Evolution have their Influence in Formation of 
Man of His Especial Day. — The People the Eeal Support 
of Science. — Majority of Muscular Forces the Majority 
of Numbers. — The Spiritual and Physical Type of Man. — 
Psycho-Anlmal Life progressively regenerative. 



ESSAY XI. 

SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 

Spiritual and Ethereal Idea has Precedence. — A Belief in 
Science and Religion. — The Dark Ages held a Curtaln over 
the Past.— The End of Professor Tyndall's Address.— The 
End not yet, say the Tens of Thousands who have read it. 
The Mental Energies and Eevelations of Our Own Day 
have been general and diffusive. — theories of humboldt 



Vi CONTENTS. 

and Herschel. — Light and Heat as such mat not emanate 
from the Sun. — An Open Polar Sea. — Science Unemotional 
may approach the footstool of the throne, but religion 
alone, the soul of science, can drink in the gleams of it 
Divine Existence. 



ESSAY XII. 

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 

An Impulse of Deity, Inherent through its Own Entity, created 
and inspired the world of spirit. — imponderable mate- 
RIAL Forces followed. — Ponderable Molecules, Atomic 
and Nebulous Matter. — Electricity and Magnetism. — Ag- 
gregation of Matter. — Seismic Forces and Upheavals. — 
Animal Life. — Mountains crumble to Dust, Ocean Beds are 
raised. — The Birth of Worlds Begins. —A New Life, and 
Man a Human Soul appears, 



PEEFACE. 



The following pages, mostly compiled from the letters 
of "Alpha," written for the "Boston Daily Transcript," and 
quotations from distinguished writers upon the subjects 
therein treated, are intended to place before the world, in 
a concise form, some of the many logical arguments easily 
understood by the common mind, against the advance- 
ment of Atheism apparent in late scientific teachings. 
The intention of the author is further to show that " life- 
forces " in matter may be accounted for much earlier than 
the present claims of scientists, even without giving them 
separate independence of motion, or a " conscious exist- 
ence," except through "spirit" emanating from Deity. 
In the choice of quotations the author has abstained from 
the use of sectarian dogmas, and to a certain extent has 
brought in the expressed views of different writers of 
many religious denominations, who speak for themselves. 
The arguments are intended, so far as they go, to show 
that Material as well as Mental and Social Science, is 
dependent upon " spirit" for its active creative force, and 
that the latter originates with God alone ; that illustra- 
tive Science, as taught at the present day, when properly 
demonstrated, by no means disproves the Immortality of 
the soul, its accountabilit}" to God, or the necessities of a 
religious life, but on the contrary in all its lessons points 
to a perfect harmony between Religion and Science, and a 



8 PEEFACE. 

higher and independent life beyond the grave. The teach- 
ings of late scientists in Europe would, if taken literally, 
contradict this fact, and set the human mind adrift upon 
a shoreless ocean of doubt and conflict, where compar- 
atively few in the past have ever found a haven of even 
imaginary rest. The author assumes, through the use of 
his own and quoted ideas, that much that is claimed as 
practical Science is erroneous, and that its propagators 
are as much dogmatists as have been some teachers of 
Religion in the past, and that many of the theories of 
Science that from time to time have been raised have 
entirety fallen. It is presumed that the present is no ex- 
ception, and that some of the most glowing of scientific 
dogmas, now uppermost, will share a like fate with those 
in generations gone by. We hold that the natural laws 
and influences of Religion ever have and ever will be the 
true nursery of human progress, and that this spirit in 
every age has been the .great sustaining force which held 
up and developed Science. In behalf of this opinion it 
may be assumed that the Religion of the Middle Ages did 
not destroy, but did much to sustain, that spark of Science, 
which, since fanned by united and diffusive intelligence, 
has grown to be the wonder of the world. We shall be 
reminded that the classic cities of the East, once supposed 
by their world-wise and credulous builders to be the 
proof of the highest civilization, and their inhabitants, the 
patrons of all knowledge and greatness, if not goodness, 
slowly but ceaselessly crumbled to dust, which now, in 
common with that of their wisest men, is scattered upon 
the desert, the abode of the " savage and the brute." But 
it will be in vain that material scientists claim the down- 
fall of these cities of the East through a religious faith, or 
even religious fanaticism. How obvious the proof to every 
mind that it was "Materialism" and not " Religion" that 
laid waste the palaces of kings and nobles, and levelled 



PREFACE. 9 

them with the earth ! It was an assumed intellectualit3 r , 
a fictitious control of matter through mind, that really 
disintegrated the fabled walls of Science, and Spirituality 
only waked too late to find them mere dust. The author may 
be excused in this connection with the introduction of ex- 
tensive individual ideas and theories on some of the scien- 
tific points in discussion, which at first sight may appear 
to contradict some principles in Science which seem to be, 
but are not } T et, " fixed." While he is a believer in Science 
he is also a believer in Religion, in which all are interested ; 
and where theories, new or old, can be set up to establish 
a union of these principles it may be legitimate to do so. 
The author is well aware that it is unusual for laymen of a 
scientific or religious faith to engage in controversies of this 
magnitude, which should have, and be able to draw sup- 
port from, the highest professional knowledge and skill. 
But in the end, if it should be found that this small' contri- 
bution is equivalent to the " widow's mite," he will have 
the satisfaction of doing something for the cause of Reli- 
gion to gain the Master's approval. Should there be one 
new principle developed in Science at the same time, he 
feels that the work of years is not lost, and that the hours 
withdrawn from a laborious business life may prove com- 
pensative, and though of small service to the student of 
nature, yet with no injury to the professional scientist 
or clerg}'man, whose province may seem to have been 
invaded. 

S. M. A. 
Boston, November 1, 1874. 



INTRODUCTION. 



u Actien " is a new word used in illustration of a 
theor}- of light, heat, and color, published in various forms 
bj- the author in 1860. The need of a representative word 
to precede actin, the Greek word for ra3"s, was to establish 
and illustrate a parent principle or root. It was coined 
because no existing word exactly expressed the idea in- 
tended to be illustrated. It would be improper to use the 
word act in, which means rays only, and which carries with 
it no idea of the origin, substance, or composition of rays, 
the molecules of which might be of different characters ; 
neither would it be justifiable to say " actinic raj^s," as 
some scientists have done, for this would be making two 
words of the Greek root and the English word mean- 
ing precisely the same thing, neither of which, used alone 
or together, would give an idea of the essence, origin, or 
composition of the ray itself. Actien, then, is the first 
positive, plrysical principle in nature, and is the essence, 
composition, or parent of rays ; and actienic raj's are those 
peculiar ra}-s of which " Actien " is the base, composition, 
or support. 

The actien theory recognizes a universe of spirit in the 
creation and support of all things, — soul, mind, and matter. 
The formula would be, first, Deity, with all His attributes ; 
second, Spirit, with its inherent Divine energies ; third, 
Soul, through its conscious connection with ponderable and 
imponderable matter. Succeeding these, two original, pro- 



12 INTRODUCTION. 

creative, physical principles follow, working through or 
containing within themselves positive and negative forces, 
from and through the united action of which all material 
molecular, atomic, or the highest ethereal imponderable 
molecular substance is produced. The first of these is 
" Actien," the active, and the second is " Ether," the nega- 
tive principle, and from the impact, union, force, and action 
of these, through Divine impulse, all that we know of earth, 
water, gases, air, electricity, magnetism, the solar, astral, 
and celestial systems are produced, each central sun, when 
aggregated, throwing off its surplus Actienic forces for 
other planetary creations. Taking the solar system as an 
illustration, " Actien," or the positive principle, would be 
defined as a primary element or fluid, emanating from the 
sun, which, in passing through " Ether," the negative force 
of intervening space, produces the effects above enumerated 
in molecular atomic nebulus or planetary construction. The 
first flows from the sun, either in all directions through the 
solar system, or in concentrated rays exclusively upon the 
planets of its creation, in general, straight lines, not neces- 
sarily carrying either light or heat as it travels, by undula- 
ting vibrations through space. These elements are gener- 
ated principally within the circle of the atmosphere sur- 
rounding the planets when the fluid pervades the same, the 
impulse and contact instantly causing a combustion, pro- 
ducing angular luminous waves, and all the changes which 
we enjoy in their various phases, including light and heat, 
together with electricity and magnetism, in the forms of 
which we know their use and power, with man} 7, other condi- 
tions existing in the chemical and geological combinations 
which surround us on every hand, numerous forms of which 
are bej'ond our present comprehension. 

These fluids positive and negative thus comprehend the 
origin of the whole planetary s}*stem, — the solid emanating 
from a moleculous, atomic, or analogous condition, similar 



INTRODUCTION. 13 

to what is now supposed to form nebulous aggregations, 
or cometary systems, followed b} T condensation and consoli- 
dation, until all the forms of planetary matter are created 
of which we have airy knowledge, the bodies graduating 
in their orbit according to density for the time being, 
in the absence of other influences, the eccentricity of the 
same diminishing as the density of the planet increases. 

The electric and magnetic fluids, which at first sight seem 
to be the most subtile of all acknowledged agents, at the 
present time are not in reality primary elements, neither 
do they contain independent life-forces, as they exist, but 
rather are creations from powers more subtile than they, 
which of themselves are primary in the creation of physical 
matter, and from which both electricity and magnetism, the 
gases and atmosphere, are created through molar friction, 
undulation, and contact with the primal properties of the 
aggregating earth and its increasing atmospheric sur- 
roundings. From the union of this actienic element and 
its negative, proceed all the physical consequences con- 
nected with the origin, subsequent changes, or present 
condition of the earth, which would be observed in its 
annual passage round the sun, or its diurnal revolutions 
on its own axis. 

The form of combination and combustion of actien 
with other substances is instantly checked and relaxed, 
and the elements of force lie in a semi-dormant state, 
when any physical obstacle of greater density than the 
atmosphere shall interpose to break its currents directly 
towards any part of the surface of the earth on which we 
may stand. Thus, when the sun shall have sunk behind 
the western horizon, the line of the same interposes an ob- 
stacle in the way of a free traverse of the fluid towards a 
more eastern point of the earth's surface, and darkness in 
its various forms intervene. 

The establishment of these laws would account for 



14 INTRODUCTION. 

the difference in temperature and molecular character of 
the atmosphere between the poles and the equator, and the 
tropical and polaric influences of each, as now understood. 
It would also account for the aurora borealis, the rainbow, 
the emission, reflection, refraction, and undulation of light, 
the temporary condition and forces of heat and cold, and 
the automatic formation of color. 

The molecular changes in the decomposition of " Actien" 
and " Ether " within our atmosphere above the horizon, 
while the sun has set below it in the evening, or above the 
sun before it rises in the morning, produces rays, when 
carefully examined, similar to those we know as the zodiacal 
lights ; and the same forces, penetrating the atmosphere 
of the pole, while under the peculiar influence of the recon- 
tact or impact of the magnetic and electric currents as~they 
sink through the pole, or may rise up through the atmos- 
phere on their return to the equator in combustion with 
the -new volume of actien precipitated upon that part of 
the pole still subject to sunlight, with the influences of an 
open polar sea upon crystallized, vaporous, atomic matter, 
would account for all the colors and flashes wliich we 
often behold so beautifully displayed in that region. 
The same theory would explain the true character of 
phosphorescent light, and the luminous tails of comets. 

Ordinary light, heat, and color all find their support in 
the combustion of actien and ether, with some kind of an 
atmosphere, without which they could not of themselves 
exist. 

The Ether of space has been variously defined for a cen- 
tury past. The author of the Actien theory does not 
attempt to give it any new properties, unless it be an 
original negative molar force filling all space, in and through 
which Actien is a positive working agent, causing all its 
undulations ; the form of the waves sharpening at their 
crests as combustion increases in the atmosphere, and light 



INTRODUCTION. 15 

is emitted and reflected from wave to wave in lines cor- 
responding with their angle of incidence. The primal 
actienic force, from its first spirit impulse restless and 
pungent, produces, as a result, new molecular and corpus- 
cular formations of various kinds at every step, which 
become aggregated and are subject not only to the original 
Actienic and Etheric forces, but other new ones generated 
through evolution, forming other physical conglomerate 
properties. 

Whether the principles of Actien and Ether, before their 
first impulse, have separate positions in space, held asun- 
der in the main by their respective specific gravities or at- 
tracting properties, or whether the}* exist together through 
all space, only separated by the individual difference of 
their force and character, does not matter. It is enough 
that they exist. Whether the resultant molecules are pon- 
derable or imponderable, solid or hollow, lie side b} T side or 
are impelled b}- expansion and contraction in volumes, from 
independent location, it is quite certain that the} 7 are antag- 
onistic to each other when in motion, and are constantly at 
war, — the result of which is the creation of a new ponder- 
able molecular and atomic substance, the integration of 
matter, and the formation of worlds. 



EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 



ESSAY I. 

INHERENT RELIGIOUS EIGHTS. 

The religious world has just cause for special and 
energetic criticism of recently published scientific 
ideas and opinions of Professor Tyndall. The ques- 
tion, whether " matter " or " spirit " takes precedence 
in the constitution and government of man, is espe- 
cially vital at the present time. The well-being of 
humanity becomes a stupendous question, when 
through it we ask whether the recognized principles 
of Christianity, with reverence and allegiance to 
Deity, shall be held first and uppermost ; or whether 
Science, as revealed through physical evolution, will 
explain and should govern the emotional conscious- 
ness of a " spiritual power," influencing and controll- 
ing man in his relations to himself and his God. 

The public mind now asks whether the teachings 
of the learned professor, so widely diffused and being 
felt by millions, are intended to recognize a " Supreme 
Being " in the construction and government of the 
universe ; or whether infidelity and atheism are lurk- 
ing beneath, at some future time to be openly pro- 
claimed on the wings of some new discovery in 
2 



18 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Physics, teaching material existence through uncon- 
scious evolutions of matter. 

In the paper read by Professor Tynclall, at Belfast, 
in August, 1874, before the British Association for 
the Advancement of Science, through a Ions: histori- 
cal and metaphysical harangue he seems to studiously 
avoid recognizing any creative power except in and 
through matter, or that arising under material laws. 
This furnishes sufficient .excuse for every lay or pro- 
fessional scientist who believes in a Supreme Being, 
every merchant or artisan who is conscious of a 
moral force stimulating his efforts to aid himself and 
his fellow-man, and every teacher of religious faith 
who recognizes a trinity and harmony connected and 
pervading the whole physical, intellectual, and moral 
world, — to combat, with all his powers, a doctrine 
inconsistent alike with the creation of physical matter, 
the revelation and continuity of spiritual existence, 
or their united power and force. 

It will be remembered by the intelligent reader 
that about two years ago Professor Tynclall " respect- 
fully proposed or assented to test the relative merit 
of human prayer, and its efficacy when brought in 
direct juxtaposition with or arrayed against the high- 
est medical skill." "Two larsre wards belon^insr to 
one hospital were designated as the field of operation, 
— prayer alone to be employed in one of them, and 
in the other medical treatment was to be administered 
agreeably with the best-known science and practice 
of the schools." 

Material demonstrations have not been recognized 
by any class of religionists as evidence of the highest 



INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS. 19 

spiritual communion with God, nor have the answers 
given to their aspiring, prayerful souls always been 
physically demonstrated. The highest and most sat- 
isfactory assurances of an answer to prayer are often 
through the "still, small voice" which gives rest and 
strength to the soul, with a peace resulting beyond a 
possibility of description through words, but fortify- 
ing the mind against the threatened dangers and 
sufferings arising through the ills of daily life. 

Under these circumstances, Professor T} r ndall must 
not blame his friends or the world for questioning the 
logic, while acknowledging the ingenuity, displayed 
in his last great effort ; neither must he be surprised if 
thousands of students lose confidence in many of his 
accustomed demonstrations of science, which hereto- 
fore they have received as truth from a teacher whose 
heart and aim thcy-have not doubted, but whose late 
-writings seem inconsistent with the rule of life, its 
duties and accomplishments, to which they have been 
educated, — the spirit of which, they believe, is 
prompted through Revelation from Deity itself. 

From the earliest ages of which we have any ac- 
count, as well as from prehistoric ages, from which, 
with Professor Tyndall, we may claim a direct line of 
continuity, every people, whether savage or civilized, 
have believed in and worshipped some sort of a Deity. 
This Principle, however vaguely comprehended or 
described, they ever considered superior to them- 
selves, the acknowledged creator of all things, either 
in the heavens above or the earth beneath, and to 
which they were accountable, and by whom they were 
rewarded or punished, here or hereafter, according 



20 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

to their works. In this, too, they have recognized a 
spiritual as well as a material existence, and that the 
former survived the dissolution of the body. This 
feeling and belief has not been confined exclusively 
to any class or condition of men, whether learned or 
unlearned, bond or free. In the lowest type of de- 
votional conception and accountability, there has been 
apparent the germ of a sentiment and belief, com- 
mensurate and equivalent, so far as that light ex- 
tended, to what is known in the most civilized 
portions of the world as Christianity. 

All knowledge pertaining to life, to religion, or 
to the Deity must have existed before any written 
record we possess ; and the impulse of the scribes who 
made that record will be found as clearly inspirational 
and spiritual, when working through the minds of jthe 
authors, as the steam-engine, electric telegraph, or 
galvanic battery of to-day proves the pre-existence 
and mental effort of artisans or handiworkers of a 
past generation. The impulse to study, to learn, 
and to produce ever has been and ever will be of 
divine origin. The published vital principles of 
revealed religion are held to be but a few thousand 
years old, yet they must have existed and worked 
from the creation of the world. Long before the 
Mosaic Code or the New Testament was written, 
these teachings were constantly revealing, but did 
not create, a law, and opened it as a special revela- 
tion to the mind of man. Religion, too, is as simple 
as it is natural to the human soul, receiving its emo- 
tional forces from Deity, and running back again to 
its Maker laden with thanksgivings and praise, and 



INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS. 21 

ever yearning for new light and greater progress in 
all that pertains to life's duties and knowledge. 

The rapid progress made through old opinions 
are shown in Professor TyndalTs address, but not 
clearer than in the teachings of the clergy throughout 
Christendom. Science has always had its votaries, 
and Religion good workers, outside of professional 
life, or the pale of the Church, which proves that it 
is not teaching alone that inspires confidence in 
either. 

During the last twenty-five years many have care- 
fully observed the rapid strides of Materialism as 
opposed to Religion, and have sought in a measure 
to study and substantiate parallels to the new theories 
propagated by scientists, with a view sometimes to 
show their fallacy by giving other reasons than those 
shown by them for proving the phenomena of physical 
evolution. The result of this has been the building 
up, in some minds at least, of a settled belief that there 
exists more error, if not dogmatism, among scientists, 
than the Church has produced for the last three hun- 
dred years. The result of these investigations has 
been the substitution of new but apparently consis- 
tent theories of the forces, assumed by scientists for 
molecular matter, which would even go beyond theirs 
in creating animal life, yet claim no existence, inde- 
pendent of the great motor, Spirit, emanating from 
God. 

M. TTurtz, in his address to the French Association 
for the Promotion of Science, recently held at Lille, 
discoursed extensively on the "theory of atoms," and 
their relation to the general conception of the uni- 



22 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

verse. He does not speak altogether confidently of 
his opinions, and adds, "We must be careful how we 
hastily formulate the judgment, that, because to our 
limited vision all is perfect and clear, the doctrines we 
enunciate are inevitably right, and those of our oppo- 
nents lamentably and unalterably wrong." At the 
same time that M. Wurtz is trying to enlighten the 
citizens of France on physical construction without 
ignoring a living faith in God, M. Dupanloup, 
Bishop of Orleans, is -making efforts to increase 
religious faith by the canonization of Joan of Arc. 

Professor Tynclall goes a step beyond M. Wurtz 
in atoms, and arrives at molecules as the primary 
constituent of our existence, molecular force becom- 
ing structural, and the agency " by which both plants 
and animals are built up." He does not enlighten us 
from what source the original impulse springs, but 
from inference we may judge it is spontaneous, 
reacting upon itself. 

These ideas differ widely from those of religious 
exponents, as do those published by different sci- 
entists regarding their own respective theories. The 
rapidity of advancement is as marked as those used 
in the exposition of the law of Physics. The simple- 
minded devotee to either Science or Keligion finds 
as much as he can do to keep pace with the essential 
teachings of either; and but for the consciousness 
and faith within him, that there is a God who not only 
creates but controls all things, he would sometimes 
fear his opportunities were not sufficient, while at- 
tending to his daily duties, to inform himself, through 
the multiplication of such teachings., of the observance 



INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS. 23 

of the physical or spiritual laws necessary to secure 
his own well-being. 

Professor TyndalPs sympathy with Lange iu his 
"History of Materialism" is unequivocally expressed 
in his late address, though he claims him as a non- 
materialist, while Democritus is his favorite early 
delineator. He runs through the list of ancient as well 
as modern philosophers, selecting from one a point 
of illustration used for his purposes, from another 
an opposite one of contradiction, but all pointing 
in the direction of Materialism, as containing the 
organizing forces of human existence, and denying the 
greatest of all principles, Spiritual Entity. 

There is nothing in the calling of either clergy or 
scientist that need bias the mind against the truth, 
whatever it may be, whether it is the revelation of 
Religion or Science. It may truly be said that man 
has never existed without a " science," or some scien- 
tific belief, independent of his spiritual life or duty, 
and that in his nature he holds this principle in great 
reverence. 

In the evolutions of life, there have been paroxysms 
of " idea " showing themselves both in the principles 
of Religion and Science, and we are passing through 
one of these — and perhaps the greatest the world 
ever knew — at the present time. In epochs of 
this kind there is often much said inadvertently by 
teachers that is not meant, and much of that which 
is meant is often misunderstood. This, it seems, is 
particularly true in regard to the teachings of some 
of the most distinguished European savans, including 
Professor Tyndall. His revision of the Belfast Ad- 



24 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

dress, with explanations, would at first sight relieve 
the public from some anxiety ; what he dropped from 
the first report, and added to the last, places it in a 
somewhat different light, and renders it capable of a 
different possible construction : yet, after all, its line 
of argument is materiality as against spirituality. 

"The only true remedy," says James Martineau, 
"for the dark infidelity and cold materialism that 
threatens the utter destruction of the religious life in 
a large portion of the people, is to give them a living 
faith, — true to the conscience, true to the intellect, 
true to the realized science of the a^e." 

A public teacher of principles, be they scientific or 
religious, gains nothing for the force of his argu- 
ments by mysticism. Students of every kind of 
life's teachings feel safer to learn, so far as they may 
be able, the destiny of a voyage before they set out, 
and they certainly have a right to know the qualifica- 
tions, or at least the intentions, of their commander. 
It seems singular that Prof. Tyndall is willing to 
leave the world in doubt for a moment as to whether 
he believes, or does not believe, in a Deity. 

Bacon does not deny that science and philosophy, 
failing in extent and comprehensiveness, may incline 
to atheism. Our modern scientists leave out of their 
reckoning those facts of Spiritualism which Bacon 
knew, and which guarded him from limiting his faith 
in Deity to deductions from second causes. 

It is but just to Professor Tyndall to add, that in 
the preface of his corrected address he says, " The 
facts of religious feeling are to me as certain as the 
facts of Physics." He continues : — 



INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS. 25 

" So likewise as regards a resolution recently passed 
by the Presbytery of Belfast, in which Professor Hux- 
ley and myself are spoken of as f ignoring the exis- 
tence of God, and advocating pure and simple Mate- 
rialism.' Had the possessive pronoun f our ' preceded 
* God,' and had the words ' what we consider ' pre- 
ceded r pure,' this statement would have been objec- 
tively true ; but to make it so this qualification is 
required. 

" In connection with the charge of Atheism, I would 
make one remark : Christian men are proved by their 
writings to have their hours of weakness and of doubt, 
as well as their hours of strength and of conviction ; 
and men like myself share, in their own way, these 
variations of mood and tense. Were the religious 
views of many of my assailants the only alternative 
ones, I do not know how strong the claims of the doc- 
trine of ? Material Atheism ' upon my allegiance might 
be. Probably they would be very strong. But as 
it is, I have noticed during years of self-observation 
that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that this 
doctrine commends itself to my mind ; that in the 
presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever 
dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the 
mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a 
part." 

These admissions do but very little, however, to- 
wards liberalizing his address, in any spiritual sense, 
and still leaves it open to the imputation of high 
atheistic tendencies. 

Professor Tyndall says : — 

K The principles enunciated by Democritus reveal 



26 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

his uncompromising antagonism to those who deduced 
the phenomena of nature from the caprices of the 
gods. They are briefly these: 1. From nothing 
comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be destroyed. 
All changes are due to the combination and separation 
of molecules. 2. Nothing happens by chance. Every 
occurrence has its cause, from which it follows by ne- 
cessity. 3. The only existing things are the atoms 
and empty space ; all else is mere opinion. 4. The 
atoms are infinite in number and infinitely various in 
form ; they strike together, and the lateral motion 
and whirlings which thus arise are the beginnings of 
worlds. 5. The varieties of all things depend upon 
the varieties of their atoms, in number, size, and 
aggregation. 6. The soul consists of fine, smooth, 
round atoms, like those of fire. These are the most 
mobile of all. They interpenetrate the whole body, 
and in their motions the phenomena of life arise. 
The first ixve propositions are a fair general statement 
of the atomic philosophy, as now held. As regards 
the sixth, Democritus made his fine, smooth atoms 
do duty for the nervous system, whose functions were 
then unknown. The atoms of Democritus are indi- 
vidually without sensation ; they combine in obedience 
to mechanical laws ; and not only organic forms, but 
the phenomena of sensation and thought, are the 
result of- their combination." 

To this doctrine we object, and propose in opposi- 
tion another formula we think more consonant with 
the divine origin of things and the opinions of 
man, and which do not conflict with Science or Eeli- 



91 



j. 

£ if 



?S 



^=: f *-' — 



.59 




-= 

= 



■OPg 



INHERENT RELIGIOUS RIGHTS, 



27 



First, Deity — Attributes. 

Second. Will — Motion. 

Third. Spirit — Soul. 

Fourth. * Actien — Ether. 

Fifth . Electricity — Magnetism. 

Sixth . Molecules — Atoms . 

Seventh . Heat — Cold . 

Eirjh th . Attraction — Eepulsion . 

Ninth . Integration — Disintegration. 

Tenth . Life — Death. 

Eleventh . Light — Color. 



Preface. Actien Theory. 



ESSAY II. 

RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 

In generalizing the experiences of Aristotle, New- 
ton, and Goethe, Professor Tyndall infers that their 
characters as specialists is not as strong as though 
they were less versatile in their talents and works. 
In the experience of the world this has not been 
proven with regard to Beligion, except whenever that 
subject alone has been the specialty. It is a universal 
truth that talent, education, and general experience 
have ever enlarged and liberalized the religious idea 
in man instead of contracting it, and the man with the 
greatest natural ability, and who has learned and 
taught Philosophy in an , enlarged sphere of action 
through a long life, has been the better Christian, as 
well as scientist, and the most liberal in his teach- 
ings. This was the case with all three of the above 
named, and is especially true of Newton. The faults 
found with Newton's scientific illustrations were not 
his own, but belonged to those who undertook to 
interpret them for the world, and who in some cases 
did it wrongly. The controversy between the ideas 
of Goethe and Newton grew entirely out of this fact. 
Newton's definition of light and color had been, and 
is, wrongly quoted in text-books. These quotations 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 29 

were not received as true by Goethe, and he not only 
combated them, but went extensively into the study 
and illustration of the principles governing color, and 
wrote a book on the subject. It does not appear that 
Goethe ever discovered these errors in quotation. 

The Address at Belfast has probably made more 
excitement, not only in the religious but in the moral 
world, than any other of Professor TynclalPs efforts. 
The press throughout Christendom has been filled 
with criticism ; and it is a mark of the distinguished 
ability of the learned savant that the world is looking 
down upon him with a stronger individual eye than 
is at present directed towards any living being, be he 
prince or king, statesman or scientist. A correspond- 
ent, in speaking of Professor Tyndall's ideas, says : — 

w That the Address strongly smacks of Materialism 
no one can gainsay. But that Materialism is capable 
of solving the problem or philosophy of life, or that 
it is capable of satisfying all the longings of man's 
nature, the deeper and diviner elements of his being, 
the vast majority of enlightened humankind utterly 
deny. 

r ' Concerning the origin of life, he is in accord with 
other renowned English scientists, — Darwin, Huxley, 
Wallace, and Spencer. He traces all the species back 
to one primordial form, resolves all substantial things 
into molecules, the universe itself being but a com- 
bination of the same ultimate atoms. There is but 
one God, and Matter is his prophet. He says, 
'Abandoning all disguise, the confession I feel bound 
to make is that . . . I discern in that .matter which 
we in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our pro- 



30 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

fessed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto covered 
with opprobrium, the promise and potency of every 
form and quality of life ' / " 

Eev. Joseph Cook, of Boston, says : — 
"Tyndall's effort is to change the definition of 
matter. Of the many forms of Materialism, his 
coincides nearest with a tendency which has been 
gathering strength among physicists for the last 
hundred years, to deny that there are two substances 
in the universe, matter and mind, with opposite qual- 
ities, and to affirm that there is but one substance, 
matter, itself possessed of two sets of properties, or 
of a physical side and a spiritual side, making up a 
double-faced unity. This is precisely the Materialism 
of Professor Bain of Aberdeen, and of Professor 
Huxley; and its numerous supporters in England, 
Scotland, and Germany are fond of proclaiming that 
among metaphysicians as well as among physiolo- 
gists, it is the growing opinion; and that the argu- 
ments to prove the existence of two substances have 
now entirely lost their validity, and are no longer 
compatible with ascertained science and clear think- 
ing. 

" Tyndall's speculations as to matter are simply an 
extension of the hypothesis of evolution, according 
to the scientific doctrine of uniformity, from the 
known to the unknown. Back to a primordial germ, 
Darwin is supposed by Tyndall to have traced all 
organization ; back to the properties of unorganized 
matter in a primordial nebula, Tyndall now traces 
that germ. Evolution explains everything since the 
germ. Evolution must be applied to explain as much 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 31 

as possible before the germ. So far as we can test 
her processes by observation and experiment, Nature 
is known to proceed by the method of evolution ; 
where we cannot test her processes, analogy requires 
that we should suppose that she proceeds by the same 
method. 

" As all the organizations now or in past time on 
the earth were potentially in the primordial germ, 
so that germ was potentially in the unorganized 
particles of the primordial star-dust ; in other words, 
there was latent in matter, from the first, the power 
to evolve organization, thought, emotion, and will. 
Where matter obtained this power, or whether mat- 
ter is self-existent, Physical Science has no means 
of determining. In the evolution of the universe 
from a primordial haze of matter, possessing both 
physical and spiritual properties, there has been no 
design, other than that implied in the original consti- 
tution of* the molecular particles. Of course, it is 
utterly futile to oppose these views as self-contra- 
dictory in the light of the established definition of 
matter."* 

Dr. McCosh, of Princeton, N. J. , says : — 

"There were whole departments of Philosophy, 
running back 2,500 years, comprising the greatest 
minds of all ages, who have recognized an intelligent 
designing Cause back of nature, and whom Professor 
Tyndall wholly ignores." » 

Dr. Miner, of Boston, in a sermon preached in the 
Church of the Divine Paternity in New York, " com- 

* A paper read before the Ministers' Meeting at the Congrega- 
tional House, Boston, Oct. 6, 1874. 



32 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

bated with learning and eloquence the assumption 
that life, in all its multifarious forms, is evolved from 
the inherent properties of matter, and argued that 
above and beyond all physical forms and manifesta- 
tions there is a spiritual intelligence of which matter 
is only the medium, the whole universe, as the term 
implies, displaying a unity of design which cannot be 
accounted for on any hypothesis of the tendency to 
development which is claimed to exist in primary 
matter." 

In "True Christian Religion" (33 and 47, VI), 
Sweclenborg says : — 

"The common idea is that, because what is 
finite does not comprehend what is infinite, finite 
things cannot be receptacles of the infinite. But 
from those things which are said in my works con- 
cerning the creation, it is evident that God first made 
Ms infinity finite by substances emitted from himself, 
from which exists his proximate encompassing sphere, 
which makes the sun of the spiritual world ; and that 
afterwards, by means of that sun, he perfected other 
encompassing spheres, even to the last, which con- 
sists of things quiescent ; and that thus, by means of 
degrees, he made the world finite more and more. . . . 
The universe is a work continent of divine love, 
divine wisdom and uses, and thus altogether a work 
coherent from firsts to lasts." . 

Sweclenborg also teaches that there are three 
natures, or degrees of life, in man, — the natural, the 
spiritual, and the celestial ; and that in the celestial, 
men do not reason about the truth : they see it, be- 
cause it is a possession. 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 33 

Hcgcl calls the idea of the Trinity the " pivot of the 
world." 

According to Schelling, God is the perfect spirit 
in three forms, and the true idea of God is a union 
of Naturalism and Theism. "Naturalism," he says, 
" seeks to conceive of God as ground of the world 
''immanent), while Theism would view him as the 
world's cause (transcendent) ; the true course is to 
unite both determinations. God is at the same time 
ground and cause. 

" It no way contradicts the conception of God to 
affirm that, so far as he reveals himself, he develops 
himself from himself, advancing from the imperfect to 
the perfect ; the imperfect is in fact the perfect itself, 
only in a state of becoming. It is necessary that this 
becoming should be by stages, in order that the fulness 
of the perfect may appear on all sides. If there were 
no obscure ground, no nature, no negative principle 
in God, we could not speak of a consciousness of God. 

" So lon^ as the God of modern Theism remains 
the simple essence which ought to be purely essential, 
but which in fact is without essence, so long as an 
actual twofoldness is not recognized in God, and a 
limiting and denying energy (a nature, a negative 
principle) is not placed in opposition to the extending 
and affirming energy in God, so long will Science be 
entitled to make its denial of a personal God. It is 
universally and essentially impossible to conceive of 
a Being with consciousness which has not been 
brought into limit by some denying energy within 
himself, — as universally and essentially impossible as 
to conceive of a circle without a centre. 



34 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

" The fulness of God's being cannot be contained 
in an abstract unity, and yet his absolute personality 
must have unity for its fundamental attribute. The 
conception of the triune God furnishes us with the sole 
bridge that can fill up the breach between God and the 
world" 

"If we separate," says Vera, "substantially and 
absolutely, God and the world, we do not only impair 
and curtail the being of the world, but that of God 
also. We curtail the being of the world by separat- 
ing it from its principle ; we curtail the being of God 
by admitting that the substance of the world is inde- 
pendent of God, and consequently by admitting two 
absolute substances. And the creatio ex nihilo could 
not fill up the gap, as the creatio ex nihilo could not 
affect the principles and essences of things which, 
under any circumstances, must be co-eternal with God. 

" God is all things in their idea, and as a whole, 
and in the unity of their existence : but he is not all 
things individually, or in their particular and frag- 
mentary existence ; he, is not what the thing is, of 
which he is the principle. Gocl is the thought, the 
idea, the essence of the universe. The thought of 
God, for the very reason that it, the essence, is Provi- 
dence of each being particularly. The Providence 
of the plant is its idea, according to which it is born, 
it grows, and dies. And so it is with everything." 

The eminent French eclectic, Cousin, says : " The 
universe itself is so far from exhausting God, 
that many of the attributes of God are there covered 
with an obscurity almost impenetrable, and are dis- 
covered only in the soul of man. God is at once 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 35 

substance and cause, at the summit of being and at 
its humblest degree, infinite and finite, together, triple, 
in fine; that is at once God, nature, and humanity. 
To say that the world is God is to admit only the 
world and deny God. However immense it may be, 
this world is finite, compared to God, who is infinite ; 
and from his inexhaustible infinitude he is able to draw, 
without limit, new worlds, new beings, new manifes- 
tations. Invisible and present, revealed and withdrawn 
in himself, in the world and out of the world, commu- 
nicating himself without cessation and remaining 
incommunicable, he is at once the living God and 
the God concealed." 

Epes Sargent, a distinguished writer, in his "Proof 
Palpable of Immortality," says : — 

M The conception of God as brought into relativity 
by an objective universe, but at the same time exist- 
ing in higher and discrete degrees of being, in the 
highest of which he is the absolute and perfect God, 
is, as I have attempted to show, not inconsistent with 
what we know of the nature of man. It would be no 
irrational speculation to hold that the divine relativity 
to the finite may, in its expression, vary with the 
character of the different earths or planets fitted for 
intelligent beings while passing through the discipline 
of a material environment ; that every planet with 
its climate and products is adapted to the state of its 
rational inhabitants ; that what we regard as the de- 
fects or evils of Nature as manifesting herself through 
our planet, are merely the emblematic reflection of 
our own defects or evils ; and so that, as the race of 
man improves, the earth itself will improve. 



36 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

" The idea that God, as the life and intelligence of 
Nature, is self-circumscribed and reduced to relativity 
by his own ? self-denying energy,' leads to a view of 
the cosmos in which all the objections of Atheism 
are swallowed up. God is seen no longer as the pro- 
visional or constitutional monarch whose laws can 
rule the universe without his aid, his functions beinsr 
merely honorary. At once ground and cause, his life 
becomes the fountain of our life, and all Nature is 
transfigured with divine possibilities ; man, derived 
and dependent as he is, becomes a free co-worker 
with God ; evil becomes a merely negative thing, 
having no real being or life ; all imperfections become 
transitional, a necessary phase of good in the making ; 
humanity, with all its selfishness, its meanness, audits 
arrogance, becomes ennobled when looked at from the 
side of its possibilities rather than its limitations and 
perversions, and takes on more and more the Divine 
Expression. We are helped to judge of mankind by 
its martyrs and saints rather than by its tyrants and 
criminals. We feel that God is not aloof from us 
but working in us, the very soul of this divine Nature 
by which we live, and without the light and life of 
whose sun we could not exist a moment. 

" Nor let it be said that God's circumscription as the 
life and soul of Nature removes God in the Highest 
from sympathy with our weaknesses and our wants. 
To sympathize with us fully, to be Love and Provi- 
dence, as well as Law and Wisdom, he must be im- 
plicitly the Nature he subordinates, besides a Power 
independent of it. It may be objected : God cannot 
be perfection, if, in his self-limitation as the substance 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 37 

of Nature, he is also imperfection ; but to this it may 
be replied that the experience of imperfection may be 
essential to the very fulness of the divine perfection ; 
that in order to be the perfect he must exist in a self- 
subordinated state as the imperfect also. 

" Remember, moreover, that if God is a trinity, he 
is in that but the prototype of man, who, in each 
grade of his nature, is related to God in a correspond- 
ing hypostasis. The triunity of earth-body, spirit- 
body, and spiritual principle, is paralleled in the three- 
fold nature of God ; and man, in each degree, and in 
all together, has God as his Providence, his spiritual 
Ideal, and his Infinite Father. The God of his 
childhood's trust and wonder is restored to him ; the 
God of his prayers is an ever-present listener. If God 
is unyielding law, he is also maternal tenderness and 
love ; if he is the life of our life, he is also the moral 
order of the universe ; and Faith is thus unchecked 
by Scfcnce, while Reason is reconciled with Faith. 

" To many profound and to many superficial think- 
ers, all theistic speculation is repulsive. They would 
say with Hooker, ' Our safest eloquence concerning 
Him is our silence ' ; or with Sir William Hamilton, 
f The highest reach of human science is the scientific 
recognition of human ignorance. ' But the heart and 
the intellect continue, nevertheless, to cry, f Oh, 
that I knew where I might find Him ! ' " 

Our highest conceptions of being is person, there- 
fore God cannot in our minds be impersonal. A 
spiritual existence both through and above matter 
carries the Deity beyond the pantheistic ideas of 
Anaximander, without establishing, in any sense, a 



38 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

material supremacy or self-existent principle in phys- 
ical substance. It is claimed by some that God is 
neither personal nor impersonal. Even this theory 
would not disprove freedom of action and consequent 
reason governing matter through specific laws of 
personal consciousness. In this sense He may be 
" super-personal. " The immortality of the soul proves 
a personality in man, yet borrowing its individual 
existence from Deity. 

" The secret things of God," says Sargent, " are 
past finding out, because, revise our conceptions of 
him as we may, there still remains in his nature the 
infinite and the unfathomable. Without irreverence 
and with perfect humility, therefore, may the specula- 
tive faculty exercise itself in attaining to a conception 
in which reason and the heart's religious aspirations 
may draw nearer to a union. 

" Nature is an organism through which the Divine 
life is forever streaming, and imparting itself to all 
organic forms ; but this organism is only a temporary 
objective manifestation of God, and other universes 
may have preceded the present. Nature is subject to 
change, to the limitations of space and time, and to 
consequent imperfection. For in his manifestations 
on this material plane of being, God is limited by his 
own f self-denying energy,' just as a spirit is limited 
by divine laws on coming within the earth-sphere. 
Therefore the divine life, with which the whole uni- 
verse throbs, is, in a manner, automatic in its develop- 
ments ; and Nature, though full of signs of intelli- 
gence, seems often to be acting blindly, and as if 
good and evil were indifferent to her, — an appearance 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 39 

which results from the self-imposed limitations by 
which the divine action is subjected to unyielding 
law in expressing itself through matter in these its 
ultimate evolutions. Thus God in Nature becomes 
Relative to God the Absolute, as existing in the high- 
est of his three states. 

" To attempt to authenticate this conception of God 
by any reference to human analogies may seem con- 
trary to that tendency of Science which would dis- 
credit as presumptuous all such comparisons. But it 
is not to limit Omnipotence by any human standard, 
to confess to that amount of anthropomorphism which 
is inseparable from the conviction that man, in a cer- 
tain sense, bears the image of God. ' Man,' says 
St. Martin, f is a type which must have a prototype, 
and that prototype is God. The body of man has 
a necessary relation to everything visible, and his 
spirit is the t} r pe of everything invisible.' One may 
believe this without irreverence, just as he may 
believe that the same law which moves the universe 
may move an atom. 

"In man we find unmistakably the phenomenon 
of double consciousness. Even Professor Huxley, 
in his Address, Aug. 25th, 1874, Jbefore the British 
Association at Belfast, describes a case in which two 
separate lives, a normal and abnormal one, seemed to 
be lived at intervals by the same individual ; and Dr. 
Carpenter, though his experience does not take in 
many important facts now known to be true, admits 
the separate states of consciousness manifested so 
wonderfully in somnambulism. 

" A corresponding truth may be at the basis of the 



40 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

conception of God as a trinity in his manifestations 
or modes of existence ; a conception of which Schel- 
ling says : * The philosophy of mythology proves 
that a Trinity of Divine Potentialities is the root 
from which have grown the religious ideas of all 
nations of any importance that are known to us.' 

" We may conceive of the Supreme Being, first, as 
God in first principles, the Absolute, the Incompre- 
hensible Unity, supremely personal and conscious, 
because possessing all conceivable perfections in their 
potency and all life in its essence ; the impulse of 
whose developments and self-limitations is an act 
of will; secondly, as God in his relations to the 
universe of derived spirit and mind, and self-limited 
according to the measure of those relations ; thirdly, 
as God in ultimates, immanent or intra-munclane, and 
still further limited by his descent into the environ- 
ments of matter and his identification with the soul 
of universal nature. 

" Thus God, in his highest hypostasis, is the Abso- 
lute One, having within himself, in idea and in es- 
sence, all the potencies of being, whether ultimating 
in what we call spirit or in matter ; in his interme- 
diate lrypostasis he becomes limited by relations to the 
world of derived spirit and mind ; in his third or 
lowest hypostasis he is the soul, the life, and the 
essence of physical Nature with all her material lim- 
itations, her seeming inconsistencies, immoralities, 
and cruelties, — all which, however, are in harmony 
with his beneficent purposes, one of which is that of 
educating intelligent beings to comprehend and enjoy 
what he has in store for them ; in harmony, too, with 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 41 

his own absolute independence of all evil, that being 
simply privation, negation, and imperfection, without 
which, however, man could not be a progressive 
being. 

M If it be said that a tri-unity of being is inconceiv- 
able in God, I might reply that it is equally incon- 
ceivable in man, and yet facts and phenomena make 
us realize that it exists. 

' f True fortitude of understanding,' says Paley, 
'consists in not suffering what we know to be dis- 
turbed by what we do not know. The uncertainty 
of one thing does not necessarily affect the certainty 
of another thing. Our ignorance of many points 
need not suspend our assurance of a few.' 

f Wc should live,' says Seneca, 'as if we were 
living in the sight of all men ; we should think as 
though some one could and can gaze into our inmost 
breast.' 

' l To ask,' says the late J. W. Jackson, f why God 
did not make a perfect creation is equivalent to asking 
that God in ultimates, on the plane of time and space, 
where he is to our perceptions necessarily conditioned 
by the sequences of duration and the limitations of 
extension, shall be identical with God in first prin- 
ciples as the eternal and infinite.' 

"No anthropomorphic argument from design is 
needed when the Pantheistic conception is made sup- 
plementary to the Theistic. ? Analogies,' says Picton, 
f which would turn our unspeakable worship of the 
Infinite One into the familiar admiration felt for the 
inventor of a new machine, are increasingly felt, in 
these times, to be two-edged weapons, with which 



42 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Faith does ill to play. For only by the recognition 
that adaptation of means to an end, in order of time, 
belongs to temporal and fragmentary life, not to 
eternal Being, do we preserve the attitude of soul 
which is unassailable by the bewilderments of false 
analogy or materialistic despair.' 

" Thus we feel that we are surrounded, both on the 
material plane of being and on the spiritual, e by an 
omnipresent, immutable Power, for whom nothing is 
too great, nothing too insignificant, but which equally 
regulates the orbits of worlds and the position of an 
atom, and in whose divine order there is nothing 
common or unclean, but its fitting place is found for 
the lowest as well as the highest in the palpitating 
life of the universe.' 

" The great teacher of scientific induction, Bacon, 
says : f So far are physical causes from drawing men 
off from God and Providence, that, on the contrary, 
the philosophers employed in discovering them can 
find no rest but by flying to God or Providence at last.' 

"'The heart of man,' says Picton, ? recoils and 
always will recoil from that ghastly sense of universal 
death, which comes with the momentary imagination 
of a Godless world ; but the mind of man is equally 
intolerant of obviously untenable propositions, main- 
tained on grounds of supposed expediency.' 

M ' There is no resting-place for a religion of the 
reason,' says Mansell, 'but Pantheism or Atheism.' 

" And yet, for a religion that is not of the reason, 
who can feel respect, and what certainty of enduring 
influence can be hoped for it ? 

e{ As Atheism must be reversed, and lost in that 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 43 

higher Pantheism which regards the whole universe 
as instinct with divine life and intelligence, so must 
this higher Pantheism bo encircled by the still 
higher Theism which, while it regards God as in 
Nature, regards him at the same time as beyond Na- 
ture, — at once the God in whom we live and move 
and have our being, the God of the material and 
spiritual universe, and the God transcendent, ab- 
solute, and infinite, the incomprehensible Unity."* 

Eev. Joseph Cook says : — 

"Many of the replies made to Professor Tyndall, 
however, miss the central point in his scheme of 
thought, and endeavor to show that it is madness to 
imagine that matter, as now and for centuries defined 
by Science, can evolve organization and life. But no 
one has proclaimed the insanity of such a supposition 
more vigorously than Tyndall has himself. ' These 
evolution notions, ' he exclaims, 'are absurd, mon- 
strous, and fit only for the intellectual gibbet, in 
relation to the ideas concerning matter which were 
drilled into us when young.' Most assuredly, Pro- 
fessor Tyndall does not propose f to sweep up music 
with a broom,' or f to produce a poem by the ex- 
plosion of a type foundry ' ! Audacities of that sort 
are to be left to the La-Mettries and Cahanis and 
Holbachs ; they are not attempted even by the 
Biichncrs and Carl Voigts and Moleschotts and Du- 
Bois Raymonds, who, with some whom Tyndall too 
much resembles, are now obsolete or obsolescent in 
Germany. ' If a man is a materialist,' said Profes- 
sor Tholuch to me once, as we walked up and down 

* Epes Sargent, in Palpable Proof of Immortality. 



44 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

a celebrated long arbor in his garden at Halle, 'we 
Germans think he is not educated.' In the history 
of speculation so many forms of the materialistic 
theory have perished that a chance of life for a new 
form can be found in nothing less fundamental than a 
change in the definition of matter. Tyndall perceives, 
as every one must who has any eye for the signs of 
the times in modern research, that if Waterloos are 
to be fought between opposing schools of Science, or 
between Science and Theology or Philosophy, the 
majestic line of shock and onset must be this one 
definition.* ? Either let us open our doors freely to 
the conception of creative acts,' he says in the 
sentence which best indicates his point of view in his 
Belfast Address, f or, abandoning them, let us radi- 
cally change our notions of matter.' 

" Now, it is singular, and yet not singular, that one 
can find nowhere in Tyndall's writings the changed 
definition on which everything turns. The following 
four propositions, all stated in his own language, 
taken from different parts of his recent discussions, 
are the best approach to a definition that I have been 
able to find, in examining all he has ever published 
on Materialism : — 

" 1. Emotion, intellect, will, and all their phe- 
nomena, were once latent in a fiery cloud. I discern 
in matter the promise and potency of every form and 
quality of life. Who will set limits to the possible 
play of molecules in a cooling planet? Matter is 
essentially mystical and transcendental. 

M 2. Supposing that in youth we had been im- 
pregnated with the notion of the poet Goethe instead 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 45 

of the notion of the poet Young, looking at matter 
not as brute matter, but as the living garment of 
God, is it not probable that our repugnance to the 
idea of primeval union between spirit and matter 
might be considerably abated ? 

"3. Granting the nebula and its potential life, 
the question, Whence come they? would still remain 
to baffle and bewilder us. The hypothesis does noth- 
ing more than transport the conception of life's origin 
to an indefinitely distant past. 

" 4. Philosophical defenders of the doctrine of 
uniformity . . . have as little fellowship with the 
atheist, who says that there is no God, as with the 
theist, who professes to know the mind of God. 
r Two things,' says Immanual Kant, ? fill me with awe, 
— the starry heavens and the sense of moral respon- 
sibility in man.' . . . The scientific investigator finds 
himself overshadowed by the same awe." 

The Eev. John Weiss, with more charity than 
many have displayed in discussing Professor Tyndall's 
Address, says : — 

w His subject included a sketch of the development 
of human thought in its effort to explain phenomena, 
from its first rude impulse to its latest expression in 
the theories of Darwin and Spencer. Nowhere else 
can we find so clear and thorough a statement of 
those theories, stripped of scientific terms, reduced 
to the essential points, and set in the clear light of the 
understanding. This alone gives value to the Address. 
But Professor Tyndall made the occasion one that 
the Germans would call epoch-making, by devoting 
the same clearness and coolness of statement to 



46 EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

explain his belief in the vitality of two things, — of 
universal matter, and of the religious sentiment. It 
is plain that he has been, and is destined to be, mis- 
understood on these points ; and as they have never 
been so distinctly connected before by any man of 
scientific pre-eminence, and as the connection involves 
the problem of free religion, it is worth while to take 
a just estimate of his thought and of its bearings upon 
the most important spiritual themes. 

"The misunderstanding will arise, I think, chiefly 
in that portion of the Address which contrasts the old 
mechanical ideas of a lifeless matter with the new 
idea, which he unequivocally espouses, that matter has 
eternally contained all the germs of all the things 
which have appeared and all the forces needed to 
make them appear. It is material and life in combi- 
nation. He says we are reduced to making a choice 
between two theories. One is the old one, that 
everything has been created out of dead matter by 
successive irruptions of a live Creator, in a series of 
creative acts. This reduces matter to a merely phys- 
ical and mechanical something, not vital, but made 
to be a medium of vitality. He thinks that Darwin, 
and all the other advocates of gradual evolution, have 
shown that theory to be no longer tenable, by show- 
ing what minute unfoldings and gradations and modi- 
fications have taken place through enormous stretches 
of time, by a method of nature which never requires 
a special interference, and provides no points where it 
might occur. These facts compel him to prefer the 
theory that the universe is live matter, in various forms 
and stages of development ; that it has been from all 



RELIGION SUPPORTS SCIENCE. 47 

eternity alive, whether thin as gas or dense as 
granite ; that the imagination cannot force itself 
back to a time when it was anything else than this, 
— the something containing the latent possibility of 
everything, the force and the germ being in the one 
original parcel ; all forms, no matter how different 
they appear now to human observation, having been 
originally involved in this eternally live substance. 
A floating particle of dnst, a flashing gem, a sluggish 
polyp, the instinct of animals and the self-conscious- 
ness of man, the savage, the sage, the prophet, the 
poet, were all comprised once in a homogeneous ocean, 
a something possible, unparticularized, but containing 
all particulars and all the vitality that each particular 
requires. Give this primitive condition of all things, 
in which no one thing was distinguishable, plenty of 
time, and all things picked themselves out, selected 
their forms, maintained them, transmitted the original 
tendency ; so that here we are, because at first we 
were ; then latent, now separated and described." * 

Thus, through this wide range of quotation, in- 
cluding sympathizers with various sects and profes- 
sions, who have with great beauty, force, and logic 
combated the arguments of Professor Tyndall, the 
great scientist gets no sympathy in any principle 
pointing towards Atheism. 

*A discourse by Rev. John Weiss, preached to the 28th Con- 
gregational Society, Boston, Sept. 13, 1874. 



ESSAY III. 

SPIRIT AND MATTER. 

" An impulse," says Professor Tyndall, " inherent in 
primeval man turned his thoughts and questionings 
betimes towards the sources of natural phenomena. 
The same impulse, inherited and intensified, is the 
spur of scientific action to-day. Determined by it, 
by a process of abstraction from experience, we form 
physical theories which lie beyond the pale of expe- 
rience, but which satisfy the desire of the mind to 
see every natural occurrence resting upon a cause. 
In forming their notions of the origin of things, our 
earliest historic (and doubtless, we might add, our 
prehistoric) ancestors pursued, as far as their intel- 
ligence permitted, the same course. They also fell 
back upon experience, but with this difference — that 
the particular experiences which furnished the weft 
and woof of their theories were drawn, not from the 
study of Nature, but from what lay much closer to 
them — the observation of men. Their theories ac- 
cordingly took an anthropomorphic form. To super- 
sensual beings, which, ' however potent and invisible, 
were nothing but a species of human creatures, per- 
haps raised from among mankind, and retaining all 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 49 

human passions and appetites,'* were handed over the 
rule and governance of natural phenomena." 

The substance of the above quotation may be par- 
tially true, but probably erroneous in the greater 
part of its deductions. It may prove or disprove the 
argument of the Professor according to the way in 
s iiich it is technically rendered or understood. " An 
impulse " may be inherent through physical man, and 
yet not be- material but spiritual, living beyond the 
decay and dissolution of the animal organism or ten- 
ement of occupation. The Deity is harmonious in his 
work, and never makes a human body without a soul, 
however small the spiritual germ may be. This im- 
pulse may have been entirely different in primeval or 
prehistoric man, from what we know of the condition 
of mankind at the present day. 

This might be presupposed by the Professor, es- 
pecially when we take into consideration his sympathy 
with the theories of Mr. Darwin, whom he quotes very 
extensively in his Address. The primeval man may 
have seen differently, thought differently, and felt 
differently from the man of the present clay, and yet 
his impulse of " evolution " be from the same source 
as that of ours, — a spirit motor, emanating from a 
Deity of constituencies, and with powers entirely 
independent of our possible conceptions of physical 
matter, at the same time containing a living principle 
entirely distinct from it. This self-conscious, spiri- 
tual impulse, acting upon the brain of the man in all 
ages, has created a second power or intelligence, 

* Hume's Natural History of Religion. 
4 



50 EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

though having no consciousness separate from both a 
spiritual and physical union, which, to a certain ex- 
tent, may be inherited and enlarged from generation 
to generation. The brain and intellect borrow their 
intelligent motive-force from spirit, which never dies, 
and find capacity for action and influence in the de- 
velopment or enlargement of every function of pro- 
gressive animal life. These capacities of organiza- 
tion and force must have materially changed from the 
early days of prehistoric man down to the present time. 

In reasoning from these standpoints, Mr. Darwin 
found difficulties which are not easily overcome, and 
Professor Tyndall, as yet, has not removed the ob- 
stacles. It is as difficult to find and brin^ forward 
evidence of the character of special existences in pre- 
historic man, whether mental, magnetic, or physical, 
as it is to judge accurately of the physical condition 
of the earth ten miles below the surface, the constit- 
uent elements of which may exist in forms equivalent 
to those shown in the crust upon which we dwell, but 
of which positive proof has always been lacking. It 
will be difficult to establish a molecular existence that 
is intelligent, though force and action may be gener- 
ated, life-like, in atomic combinations. These forces, 
however, must ever be dissolved on the disintegra- 
tion of bodies which, when aggregated, borrow im- 
pulse through laws of attraction and repulsion. 

The soul and intellect of man open a way, both 
through intuition and reason, to physical theories and 
principles which lie beyond. These have a common 
impulse to examine and understand the phenomena 
of animal life, and its agencies in perpetuating, be- 



SriHIT AND MATTER. 51 

yond their own individual possibilities, an enlarged 
spiritual and never-dying existence. The union of 
these forces is not always perfect. TVc have evi- 
dences around us at times that they have a distinct 
individual or independent existence through this 
apparent disjointure, sometimes the one and some- 
times the other disappearing, and this so far as to 
leave the existence of the other doubtful. But 
however this may be, it is certain that the body, as a 
mere tenement of the spirit and mind, dies, and 
becomes disorganized. But Science has never yet 
furnished, and probably never will furnish, a particle 
of evidence that the life principle, or the soul, of that 
body died with it, though as an independent life-force, 
it may follow its disintegrated elements to a new or- 
ganization. On the contrary, our own consciousness 
and sensation furnish daily and hourly proof that the 
spirit lives beyond the flesh, and is inherent in man 
through the impulses given by God alone. Historic 
time, it is presumed, travels but a small distance 
back compared to what maybe called the prehistoric ; 
and desire, which may be termed an inspiration of 
soul, mind, and the material body, reaches much 
further, borrowing support on its way from all evi- 
dences within its comprehension. 

This impulse grasps and forms theories of that 
mysterious evolution which has followed man from 
his first appearance from the hands of his Maker, 
down to that present condition which to-day proves, 
probably stronger than ever, the existence of an 
independent spiritual life. The human mind natu- 
rally seeks a knowledge of the development of matter 



52 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

in all the forms in which it exists around us, and 
Science steps in to enlighten it in its researches. 
Barren, indeed, will that mind ever be, however, 
which seeks to prove, through its own dogmatisms, 
that the end is reached, that the laws of matter are 
primitive, and that spirit life, which must pre-exist 
before the origin of matter, is only secondary in the 
creation of that unfathomable universe even now but 
slowly opening to the mind of man. It is proba- 
bly true that both the early and late inhabitants of 
the earth, as a whole, have, in a large sense, been 
students of nature. It is only the more cultivated 
who follow precedent. A large portion of the true 
development of scientific investigation, which is given 
us at the present day, has been through individual 
studies of nature, oft isolated and without the ad- 
vantages of scientific books or associations. Mistakes 
of natural principles and their eliminations, though 
differing in degree according to the magnitude of 
such cultivation by the student who depends upon 
the experience of previous investigators for his basis, 
are oftener made, than by him who plods along alone, 
perhaps unaided and unsustained, till he discovers a 
law which he can eliminate with certainty. The rea- 
sonings and physical demonstrations of the student, 
acting upon texts and formulas of his professor, will 
often exemplify some other truth or fiction, or con- 
tradict his own hypothesis. Professor Tyndall, learned 
as he is, both as a student of nature and of art, with 
his great versatility of talent, and taste for research 
and demonstration, to a certain extent has fallen into 
the same error. 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 53 

This is particularly true where he attempts to prove 
the independent primary character of existing life- 
forces in nature, which perish with the disintegration 
of individual bodies, thus virtually denying the 
existence of spirit, the life and force of all action 
through material combinations. He claims that 
the mind became early clouded by superstitious 
beliefs, and that the religious or anthropomorphic bias 
has been the great drawback of Science. Had it not 
been for this, if we draw the correct inference from 
his writings, the sky would ever have been clear for 
scientific investigation, and man ere this might have 
comprehended, not only the origin but the end of his 
existence, and all this through the revelations of 
molecular and atomic construction, — in a word, that 
spirit as an independent intelligent force only exists 
in, but dies with, the organization of the physical 
man. 

We will not only assume, as the Professor may 
already have done, that the molecule is the primary 
source of the atom, and creates it, through its own 
dissolution, but go beyond anything we have yet 
heard suggested from scientists, and fix a character 
for both that would much help the Professor's theory, 
without injuring our own. This, of course, we do 
somewhat at the risk of weakening the lrypothesis 
we set up ; but the exposition is fearless, neverthe- 
less, and is one that, by all means, should be under- 
stood. If materialists can make anything from 
it inconsistent with the existence of " spirit " as an 
independent principle from matter, they are welcome 
to do so. 



54 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

What are Molecules and Atoms ; what is their 
size, condition, and essence ; what relation do they 
bear to each other ; and what their life-force and me- 
chanical action ? * 

Professor Tyndall has not explained this to the 
common mind, if he has to his peers. The popular 
mind is ready to receive and recognize any principle 
in physics bearing upon mechanical questions within 
its compass, and give them life and motion, either 
through material or spiritual energies, as the case 
may be ; such minds only require that tangibility shall 
find place in their code of application to the industrial 
arts. We would then venture to clothe molecules 
and atoms with all the temporary vitality, essence, 
and conditions attributed or accorded to them by 
Professor Tyndall, though still lacking independent 
life energies. 

Passing clown the formula of creative existences 
from Deity, through Will ; Force, Motion ; Spirit, 
Soul; Actien, Ether; Electricity, Magnetism, — we 
come to Molecules and Atoms. We believe mole- 
cules may be divided into two classes, ponderable 
and imponderable, — the former in a sense repre- 
senting the constituents of " atoms," or porous and 
solid physical matter ; while the latter may be called 
the integral or representative of the more subtile and 
pungent life-like forces, as Actien, Ether, Electricity, 
Magnetism, the Gases, etc. Ponderable molecules 
may also be hollow, but ever represent two forces, a 
positive and negative : to the positive is due expan- 

* See Plate 2. 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 55 

sion and contraction, under force and motion ; to the 
negative, which may be said to form a coating or shell 
around the positive, resistance. 

Molecule, then, is the parent or source of Atom, 
which is the slag produced and thrown off from mo- 
lecular action and decomposition. While the pon- 
derable Molecule is a result of the workings of the 
two great first physical principles in nature * (next 
to spirit) , and consequently contains a life principle 
more pungent and subtile than any yet recognized by 
scientists, Atoms, either singly or in the aggregate 
form, independent of gravity, possess only the pow- 
ers of attraction and repulsion, and these when acted 
upon by other forces. 

Molecules, on the contrary, are independently active 
at all times as against any principle not anterior 
to their own existence. In these forces we recognize 
an action kindred with the principles of physical and 
animal life, not intelligence, mind, or spirit, the 
latter of which only comes from Deity, and the former 
a result of the combination of spirit with animal life. 
The forms, sources, and action of molecules, ponder- 
able or imponderable, may be various, however in- 
finitesimal in size, but as yet have not been measured. 

The two primary physical principles used in the 
construction of the whole universe, which we have 
called Actien and Ether, as positive and negative 
energies, are, after the first impulse of Divine will, 
always active, and may continue so till that will is 
withdrawn. 

* Actien and Ether. 



56 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

No doubt these, as individual antagonistic active 
forces, generating both ponderable and imponderable 
molecules, are constantly changing conditions or de- 
stroying each other. This process may be considered 
the working of unconscious life-forces, that are the 
nearest approach to the conscious. The result of this 
effort is material substance emanating from consum- 
ing molecules forming corpuscles and "atoms," which 
aggregate in various forms, and take their place in the 
active field of matter under laws of Physics. Even 
though going further than Professor Tyndall in fur- 
nishing two independent physical principles primary 
to the mechanical construction of a molecule, that, 
according to his theory, might be endowed with 
perpetual motion, we do not claim so much for it, but 
are willing it should borrow, with all other physical 
matter, its life from the will of Deity. 

If the illustration of the Molecule and Atom should 
stop here, it is possible they might not be considered 
perfectly clear to every mind, even to one that has 
some definite idea of both as already described ; but 
when further considered, and coupled with the illus- 
tration of the workings of light, heat, cold, human 
blood, color, ice, water, steam, and otlier elements, 
it will be found that an individual secondary force 
and creative power is given to molecules, far beyond 
that in any description deliDeated by Professor Tyn- 
dall, without even the most distant claim of a life- 
force independent of the essence or prerogatives of 
Infinity. An apple falls from a tree in obedience 
to a law : it will not be claimed that that law com- 
prehends intelligence, but only force. The impulse 



SPIRIT AND MATTER. 57 

of gravity will be governed by the amount and density 
of the mass, not by its intelligence. The aggrega- 
tion and bulk of matter or atoms will thus accelerate 
or retard the motion. A worm or beetle, both pos- 
sessing intelligence, will fall as quick as a pebble of 
the same size and weight, unless the intelligence of 
the former is used in resistance to its downward 
force. 

Motion, as a principle, is not life, but a condition. 
Intelligence must possess life, — therefore uniting two 
principles in one action. Consciousness must exist 
beyond matter, as intelligence through inspiration 
passes from and beyond the source of material being, 
to an independent existence afar off, through a mental 
instead of a physical volition. Important truths have 
been known to travel many miles without the aid of 
the least physical conductor, and entirely through a 
spiritual or mental projective force. This force may 
have started from, and been received by, a physical 
body ; but in the space of transmission it could not 
have belonged to either. 

Professor Tyndall thinks the more penetrating in- 
tellects of our race are among the least satisfied with 
what is equivalent to a religious faith ; and in ancient 
times this class of minds soon tried to connect 
natural phenomena with their physical principles. 
This we think is an error, as history furnishes a 
large class of the most eminent men of nearly every 
age, who were in some sense religious devotees. 
He thinks the Sciences were born under the influences 
of the commercial aristocracy of Greece, in connec- 
tion with their Eastern neighbors. He mingles the 



58 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

gods of heathen mythology with the Christian's God 
in the denunciations of Euripides and others, where 
there was declared a " determination to sweep from 
the field of theory this mob of gods and demons, 
and to place natural phenomena as a basis more 
congruent with themselves." " Atoms and Molecules " 
thus were to become the force and material of con- 
struction, and an independent world of matter, life, 
and action was to be evolved. 



ESSAY IV. 

MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 

"Wixn regard to the influence," says Professor 
Tyndall, "wielded by Aristotle in the Middle Ages, 
and which, though to a less extent, he still wields, I 
would ask permission to make one remark. When 
the human mind ha3 achieved greatness and given 
evidence of extraordinary power in any domain, there 
is a tendency to credit it with similar power in all 
other domains. Thus theologians have found comfort 
and assurance in the thought that Newton dealt with 
the question of revelation, forgetful of the fact that 
the very devotion of his powers, through all the best 
years of his life, to a totally different class of ideas, 
not to speak of any natural disqualification, tended 
to render him less instead of more competent to deal 
with theological and historical questions. Goethe, 
starting from his established greatness as a poet, and 
indeed from his positive discoveries in Natural History, 
produced a profound impression among the painters 
of Germany when he published his f Farbenlehre,' 
in which he endeavored to overthrow Newton's theory 
of colors. This theory he deemed so obviously ab- 
surd that he considered its author a charlatan, and 
attacked him with a corresponding vehemence of Ian- 



60 BELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

guage. In the domain of Natural History Goethe had 
made really considerable discoveries ; and we have 
high authority for assuming that, had he devoted him- 
self wholly to that side of science, he might have 
reached in it an eminence comparable with that which 
he attained as a poet. In sharpness of observation, 
in the detection of analogies, however apparently 
remote, in the classification and organization of facts 
according to the analogies discerned, Goethe pos- 
sessed extraordinary powers. These elements of 
scientific inquiry fall in with the discipline of the 
poet ; but on the other hand, a mind thus richly 
endowed in the direction of Natural History may be 
almost shorn of endowment as regards the more 
strictly-called physical and mechanical sciences. 
Goethe was in this condition". He could not formu- 
late distinct mechanical conceptions ; he could not 
see the force of mechanical reasoning ; and in regions 
where such reasoning reigns supreme he became a 
mere ignis fatuus to those who followed him." 

Sir Isaac Newton lived and died a Christian, and 
left a record in Science and Philosophy which few have 
equalled, or will ever be able to eclipse. Goethe's pre- 
tensions may have been less than the future interpreta- 
tions of his vast literary labors may warrant. Time 
opens much in the history of a great mind that may 
not be revealed through his writings in his day and gen- 
eration. It will be clear to every reader of Goethe's 
history, that whatever his honors or distinctions above 
his associates, his mind was never clouded by man- 
worship to that degree that he could not see and feel 
the influence of a Deity ever round and about him, 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 61 

nor did he deny a spirit existence beyond the grave. 
Of that part of his work dedicated to colors, we can- 
not properly judge from the mistaken standpoint from 
which he viewed what had been termed, but what 
was not, Newton's theory of light. It is perhaps 
difficult at this time to account for the erroneous 
definition of Newton's theory, which has led the 
world so long astray. Goethe was mistaken, as 
many others have been ; otherwise his theory of 
colors might never have been written. He, like 
thousands of others, took the ordinary encyclopedial 
idea that Newton believed and taught that " lisrht was 
composed of colors," which Newton in his "Interpreta- 
tions " distinctly denies . The theory always attributed 
to Sir Isaac, that ichite light is made of colors, is so 
prevalent that teachers often encourage students in 
the vain attempts to produce pure white from variously 
colored pigments by mixture, — a theory as impossible 
as for the eye not to distinguish any but white rays 
in the colors of the rainbow or in the flashes of the 
aurora borealis. If Goethe became a " a mere ignis 
fataus to those who followed him," he certainly was 
not then, nor would he now be, in that respect, alone 
in his attempts to enlighten the world through 
scientific teachings.* The scientist for centuries 
has assumed that the earth supply of light, as 
light, and heat, as heat, flows wholly from the 
sun, while all evidence we can get on that subject 
proves that the nearer we approach the sun from the 
surface of the earth, the darker and colder we find 
it ; that this great volume of heat and light that we 
* See Plate I. 



62 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

enjoy, so small in comparison to what scientists 
estimate the whole volume of the heat of the sun to 
be, is generated on the surface of the sun, and is 
precipitated against the force of gravity, by undula- 
tion through space, to and through our atmosphere, 
which of itself is so cold, only seven miles from 
the earth's surface, as to paralyze any one ascending 
to that height. Is not the Actien theory,* which 
provides the emission of a subtile fluid from the sun 
towards his planets, but which is not necessarily 
"light" or "heat" till it reaches the atmosphere, 
through undulation, producing both by combustion 
with it, as consistent a theory for the earth's sup- 
ply? Without irreverence, would it not be at least 
more economical ? Would not Mercury be more con- 
sistently habitable than now, under the old theory, 
which would make her substance so much hotter 
than molten iron ? Would not Neptune seem a little 
more like what the great Creator would build up for 
mankind, if it had, as all the intermediate planets 
may have, an equable light and heat, through the 
consumption of Actien and Ether thus supplied ? At 
present, under the old theory, its degree of cold 
must be as much more intense than that producing 
ice as is the heat enveloping Mercury more than that 
we enjoy on the surface of our earth. In the light and 
heat from the gas we burn we detect no difference, 
whether the pipe containing it is one or five miles 
from the fountain of supply. May we not thus infer 
the supply of light and heat for the solar system, or 
must we, through claims to Science, attribute to Deity 

* See Plate II. 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 63 

absolute absurdities at times, when reasoning from 
cause and effect, as old theories compel us to do? 

Professor Proctor, in his Astronomical Lectures, 
says : — 

" One hundred and eight times does the sun's diam- 
eter exceed that of the earth, and the surface of the 
sim exceeds that of the earth 108 times 108 times, 
or 11,600 times, while the volume of the sun exceeds 
that of the earth 1,250,000 times. But the mass of 
the sun is not so much greater than the earth. It 
would appear as though the body of the sun were con- 
stituted of matter about a quarter lighter on an aver- 
age than that which constitutes the earth, and the 
result is that the sun's mass, instead of exceeding 
the mass of the earth 1,250,000 times, only exceeds 
it 315,000 times. 

" But now," continues Professor Proctor, " let us 
pass from the question of the sun's might, to its heat 
and light. 

" The sun is the source of all these forms of light 
and life which exist upon the earth. That is no idle 
dream. Every form of force upon the earth, every 
action that we perform, all the forms of energy we 
know of, even the very thoughts we think, may be 
said to come from the sun. It is by the sun's heat 
that life is maintained upon the earth. 

" And now, as to the quantity of that heat. Sir 
John Herschel, in the south of Africa, made experi- 
ments to determine the actual quantity of heat that 
is received from the sun. The heat there was so 
great that at the depth of four inches below the sand 
the thermometer rose to 160°. He was able to cook 



64 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

a steak by placing it in a box covered with glass, and 
that inside another box with a glass cover, and to 
boil eggs hard. He made experiments, and found in 
the first place, that about one fourth of the sun's light 
and heat was cut off at midday by the air ; and tak- 
ing that into account, and making the requisite cal- 
culation for a large extent of surface, he found that 
the quantity of the sun's heat that fell on an area of 
one square mile would be sufficient to melt, in a 
single hour, 26,000 tons of ice. Well, now that is 
merely the quantity received by a square mile of 
the earth's surface. But the earth presents to the 
sun a surface (regarding her for a moment as a flat 
disk) 50,000,000 square miles in extent. And then 
how small is the quantity of the sun's light and heat 
that this earth actually captures. You have only to 
consider how small the sun looks in the heavens, and 
consider how small our earth would look beside him, 
with this small diameter compared with his, of one 
inch to three yards, and you can see how small a pro- 
portion of the sun's heat, we capture. By a calcula- 
tion which can be readily made, it is found that only 
the 2,000,000,000th part, or less than that proportion 
of the sun's heat, is captured by the earth ; and all the 
planets together receive only one 227,000,000th part 
of the sun's heat. Here is another mystery the study 
of Astronomy presents : only one part in 227,000,000 
parts appears to be applied to any useful purpose, 
and the rest seems wasted. It is not for us to judge 
of the operations of Nature. But here, at any rate, 
do we seem to find a confirmation of the saying of the 
atheist that sounds so strange to us, that ? Nature, in 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 65 

tilling a wine-glass, upsets a gallon.' There is the 
sun's heat being continually sent forth, and only the 
227,000,000th part received. Only imagine a mer- 
chant who spent large sums of money, and who em- 
ployed only one cent usefully for every, $2000,000 of 
his income ! And that is what the sun appears to be 
continually doing. The actual emission of solar light 
and heat corresponds to what would be obtained if 
on every square yard of the sun's surface, six tons of 
coal were consumed every hour. In every second, 
the sun gives out as much heat as would be given out 
by burning 11,600,000,000,000,000 tons." 

Professor Tyndall calls Heat " a mode of motion." 
So must be Cold. Either will produce an electric 
current, positive or negative as the case maybe, not 
necessarily carrying heat or cold with it. This may 
be true of both, without either being the origin of 
motion. Motion may be the origin of Heat and Cold, 
as they are conditions merely, and their action, sim- 
ple expansion and contraction; while imponderable 
molecular force may be the life or cause of action in 
whatever degree it may be observable, actienic and 
etheric impact furnishing the energy. 

Animal blood may be supposed to form an excep- 
tion to all fluid matter, in the fact that a trinity of 
forces are constantly at work in its sustenance.* The 
molecular action of this fluid must be through ponder- 
able and imponderable energies, with distinctive elec- 
tric and magnetic co-operators. All these principles 
are ever active in the blood, and through them circula- 
tion and distribution is provided by expansion and 
* See Plate II. 



66 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

contraction of molecules, and magnetic attraction. 
Blood, of all material substances, approaches the near- 
est to independent animal life, and yet, when spirit 
is separated, how soon it dies. 

Color is a condition created by light and shade, 
and in air or fluids its magnitude or hue is generally 
governed by the angle from which the light of obser- 
vation is cast. 

We can judge but little of color beyond our atmos- 
phere. The rays of actienic light reaching us from 
above will always be colored differently to our view, 
according to the density, rarity, and humidity of the 
belt that, for the time being, is stratified over our 
heads. A ray of light flowing in a straight line, with 
no intervening obstacle, will ever be white to our 
vision. When it is thrown from a straight line, from 
any cause, whether it be by prism, cloud, or vapor, it 
overlaps other rays, creating shades, varying as they 
maybe intercepted by light from other directions, and 
the thickness of the plates, the colors produced being 
governed by the angle of reflection or refraction, as the 
case maybe. The spectroscope often, if not always, 
plays false by breaking the regular waves of undula- 
tion, and creating different colors in the surround- 
ing atmosphere, instead of transmitting, as is sup- 
posed, the true color belonging to foreign substances. 

Ice, water, vapor, and steam may be traced back 
to molecules, the various conditions being chargeable 
to the occasional conditions to which they are sub- 
jected.* 

Ice will emit vapor when the surrounding atmos- 

* See Plate II. 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. G7 

phcre is below the freezing point. This vapor rises 
against the laws of gravity. A general vaprous ex- 
pansion does not meet the case, so far as to enable the 
humid matter to rise through an atmosphere more than 
seven hundred times lighter. Individual molecular 
expansion would onry account for it, even independent 
of attraction. Under the actienic combustion neces- 
sary to disintegrate a molecule of water from ice, the 
hydrogen gas may, in some form, create for itself a 
shell of oxygen, if mechanically combined, making 
each individual molecule a simple balloon for the time 
being, which would take it up as generated. Yapor 
in the atmosphere must of necessity be so diffused as 
to be permeated with the molecules of common air, 
destroying the old theory of its general buoyancy, 
which can only be reasonably accounted for from the 
real nature of its specific individual molecular char- 
acter. A molecule of steam is a simple bubble ; it 
may be filled with lrydrogen or other gas or heated air. 
The former would account for its suspension for a 
long time in clouds above us ; the latter for a quick 
condensation with rain or snow. Thus we can theorize 
life-forces far beyond, and much more consistent 
than, those of the atoms of Democritus, which of 
themselves were dead. Our atoms are also inanimate 
physical matter, but our molecules have life, pun- 
gency, force, and we have to acknowledge for them 
a spirit motor beyond. 

Thus, through the lighting of our houses with gas 
drawn from a reservoir afar off, the common mind 
borrows an idea of infinity in lighting the heavens ; 
while by heating our dwellings with furnace-coal, 



68 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

hundreds of miles from the quarry, we accomplish a 
practical fact, — not possible by its consumption in 
or near its original bed. A beneficent Creator goes 
beyond our possible conceptions, and gives us both 
light and heat through the consumption of two simple 
original principles in nature. 

Rev. Mr. Weiss, in the sermon before referred to, 
asked Professor Tyndall this question : — 

"How do you get your eternally live matter 
started ? And that question will always be in order 
so long as the human mind is so built that it must 
inquire for causes. One of the elements of vitality 
in this live matter must have been this pertinacity for 
tracing things to their sources, for tracing its own 
mother, then live matter, to its source. How can we 
escape from this ? There was, we will suppose, an 
eternally vital matter. Was vitality materialized, or 
was matter vitalized ? That is to say, can the human 
mind conceive of any mode of existence previous to 
this simultaneous life and matter ? " 

If this question can be answered in any other form 
than that the " live matter " must be set in motion by 
its author, we know not the secret, and must plead 
ignorance of the way and means. 

Mr. Weiss further adds : — 

"Now, if being unwilling, for moral reasons, to 
be pantheistic, we reply that there must have been 
a something previous, a pure, bodiless, matterless 
spirit, we avoid Pantheism only verbally ; we put up 
a use of language to suppose what the mind cannot 
conceive. We cannot conceive of a fulness of spirit 
that depended upon being utterly bereft and void of 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 69 

matter. That is f a dream of the shadow of smoke.' 
It is a so-called spiritual view set up to pick a per- 
sonal Deity out of au eternal universe. 

" If any material became evolved, it must have been 
latent in the life-force or spirit. For spirit that was 
not always holding material in solution could not 
have taken a single step towards contriving material 
and maintaining vital relations with it. 

" But Professor Tyndall appears to explain his live 
matter in such a manner as to dispense altogether 
with all creative acts. He does not intend to state it 
in this way, but he will be misunderstood to do it in 
his scientific eagerness to reach simplicity of treat- 
ment by avoiding all language that has taken airs 
from having been much with theology. He says he 
cannot put his finger on a spot where creative inter- 
ference was required. But what is his gradual method 
of nature but gradual creative continuance ? " 

Professor Tjmdall thinks that " Science demands 
the radical extirpation of caprice," yet it is doubtful 
whether there is a class of educated people who are 
more capricious than Materialists. He thinks that 
Bacon's estimate of Democritus would place the latter 
above Plato or Aristotle, "though their philosophy 
was noised and celebrated in the schools, amid the 
din and pomp of professors." Without undertaking 
to decide between the three contestants, it may be 
pertinent to ask Professor Tyndall whether the pres- 
ent age is any exception to the habit of mutual 
laudation of professors, even if not done "amid din 
and pomp." He thinks "Genscric, Attila, and the 
barbarians destroyed the Atomic Philosophy." If 



70 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

this was the fact, the disaster could not certainly be 
laid, as he claims, to religionists, whether they were 
superstitious or otherwise. 

"Lange," says Tyndall, "considers the relation of 
Epicurus to the gods subjective, — the indication prob- 
ably of an ethical requirement of his own nature. 
We cannot read history with open eyes, or study 
human nature to its depths, and fail to discern such a 
requirement. Man never has been, and he never will 
be, satisfied with the operations and products of the 
understanding alone ; hence, Physical Science cannot 
cover all the demands of his nature. But the history 
•of the efforts made to satisfy these demands might 
be broadly described as a history of errors, the error, 
in great part, consisting in ascribing fixity to that 
which is fluent, which varies as we vary, being gross 
when we are gross, and becoming, as our capacities 
widen, more abstract and sublime." 

Has there any principle been less fixed for the last 
two thousand years than the scientific principle as 
taught by any class of scientists existing within 
that period ? 

Professor Tyndall describes Aristotle and his fol- 
lowers as being void of imagination , which he prop- 
erly thinks necessary for physical conceptions, though 
he does not like the associations of the word. In this 
respect he quotes Pascal as being more clear and 
vivid in description. If Professor Tyndall would 
substitute impressibility for imagination, he would 
recognize a condition in the human mind nearer fitted 
to a warm and clear appreciation of both Religion 
and Science than Aristotle possessed. 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 71 

"There is in imagination," says Buckle, "a divine 
and prophetic power, and an insight into things which, 
if properly used, would make it the ally of Science 
instead of the enemy. By the poet, nature is con- 
templated on the side of the emotions ; by the man 
of science, on the side of understanding : they are as 
truthful ; they are as likely to be right. They obey 
fixed laws ; they follow an orderly and uniform course ; 
they run in sequences ; they have their logic and 
method of inference. Poetry, therefore, is a part of 
Philosoplry, simply because the emotions are a part 
of the mind. If the man of science despises their 
teaching, so much the worse for him." 

"Professor Tyndall," says Mr. Weiss, "cannot 
ignore the main point, though his language seems to 
swerve from it, viz. How did matter become vital- 
ized by this magnificent method which we call natural 
selection ? We see that there has been a slow accu- 
mulation of results, that grow more complex, but 
at the same time more definite, till they attain to 
permanence. But how did Nature start with this 
drift to accumulate objects in this way, and to self- 
register herself? There has been some fashioning 
drift slowly struggling through Nature's principle of 
selection, and all things have been spontaneously 
done. But, I ask, wmence comes Nature's power to 
do all things in this spontaneous way, without the 
intervention of the old-fashioned Creator?" 

" But Professor Tyndall prefers to think that all 
these apparent marks of design illustrate the method 
of Nature, 'and not the tcchnic of a man-like 
artificer.' Instead of supposing that a Deity works 



72 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

and adapts and modifies, plots and reflects, as a man 
does, to reach certain results, he supposes that each 
result is a natural resultant of a whole neighborhood 
of results, and that the adaptation of one thing to 
another came to pass through stages of perfection 
by the addition of ? increment to increment of infin- 
itesimal change,' so that f the exquisite climax of 
the whole' is a result of natural selection. And 
here again it is plain that a finer idea of the creative 
method solicits our admiration. It is a much more 
subtile process, held by nicer links and a more even 
logic, when all the objects of nature gradually make 
their own environment, take what benefit can be 
derived from it, and let the benefit react upon the 
environment till insensibly another modification of it 
is reached, and other objects, than if a Creator should 
make a number of objects with the design of accom- 
modating them to each other by subsequent con- 
trivances. In the former process the objects are not 
invented on purpose to show what fine contrivances 
can be introduced to make them mutually convenient ; 
for there never was a moment in the whole eternity 
of them when they were not mutually convenient ; 
when, in fact, nature let no objects survive that were 
not mutually adaptive. All the rest died out be- 
cause they could not be adapted ; the force and 
matter that was on the spot could make nothing of 
them ; the environment left them not a peg to hang 
from ; if a personal Creator had intervened he could 
have contrived nothing to rescue them from the 
minute difference which gave an advantage to the 
survivors, and saved them to become adapted." 



MATERIAL LIFE-FORCES. 73 

" We have no hesitation in saying, " quoting 
from the writings of John Weatherbee, "that the 
most melancholy shadow that could be thrown 
over, or into, the thought of the world would be 
the a*eueral or universal conviction that this is all of 
life ; that when a man dies that is the end of him. 
Referring to Buckle again, whose thought goes below 
the surface into the sub-soil of human nature, he says, 
f If the belief in immortality was eradicated from the 
human mind, it would drive most of us to despair.' 

" In the mean time tincl now, may it not be possible 
that there are more than five senses ? that the ray of 
mental light may overlap the normal mind of man, 
and that in happy moments some may grasp a wider 
spectrum of the mental ray ? and that even now it may 
be the twilight of a more extended vision just rolling 
in upon the world of thought ; and for some inscru- 
table reason, as of yore, it is hidden from the wise 
and prudent and revealed unto babes." 

w Professor Tynclall," says the " London Spectator," 
" recently lectured at Manchester on ' Crystalline and 
Molecular Force,' and took the opportunity of some 
concluding remarks to distinguish his religious Agnos- 
ticism from Atheism: f He had, not sometimes, but 
often in the spring-time, watched the advance of the 
sprouting leaves, and of the grass, and of the flowers, 
and observed the general joy of opening life in nature, 
and he had asked himself this question : Could it be that 
there was no beimr or thins: in nature that knew more 
about these things than he did? did he in his ignor- 
ance represent the highest knowledge of these things 
existing in this universe? The man who put that 



74 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

question fairly to himself, if he was not a shallow 
man, if he was a man capable of being penetrated 
by profound thought, would never answer the ques- 
tion by professing that creed of Atheism which had 
been so lightly attributed to him.' That is, Professor 
Tyndall, as we understand him, has often been filled 
with doubts, not of his own thesis, that molecules 
and molecular forces are the ultimate seed-vessels of 
human life, mind, and thought, but as to whether 
those seed-vessels themselves did not owe their origin 
to a Being who understands and shapes their powers 
of growth.' Well, that is all perfectly consistent with 
what he said at Belfast. But is Professor Tyndail's 
peroration perfectly consistent either with that or with 
any other recent profession of Professor Tyndail's ? 
r He was afraid that many of the fears which are now 
entertained on these subjects really had their roots in 
a kind of scepticism. . . . He would exhort 
such men to cast out scepticism, for this fear had its 
root in scepticism.' We confess we don't know what 
the sentiment of that passage is, if it be not a delicate 
and refined kind of buncombe. Agnosticism is 
scepticism. If Professor Tyndall has his moments 
of hope that the universe if directed by a Mind, after 
all, but thinks it a perfectly open question, what can 
he mean by denouncing scepticism as a state of mind 
to be l cast out ' ? Is there any weakness or coward- 
ice in supposing that the universe, if it were not 
under divine government, would ultimately come to 
grief?" 



ESSAY V. 

MECHANICAL, EVOLUTION. 

Demockitus, in his aggregation of physical sub- 
stance , went as far as Atoms for a primary principle, 
but acknowledged that individually they did not pos- 
sess sensation, and it was only in their combina- 
tion that the phenomena of life arises, or that atoms 
of themselves contained even the principles of animal 
or vegetable mobility. This was going about as far 
as have some modern philosophers in the establish- 
ment of perpetual motion. 

They have constructed a piece of mechanism that 
would almost move of itself, but not quite. It needed 
an " impulse " beyond itself. Professor Tyndall and 
his confreres have gone further than Democritus, and 
have furnished him a principle of action and motion 
in molecules. 

We have endeavored to show the mechanical con- 
struction of a molecule, and where it borrows its 
force ; but to supply that force we go back to two other 
principles in nature, the one positive, the other nega- 
tive, to create and give life and action to the mole- 
cules. At the same time we show that even they, so 
far removed from atoms in all that would constitute 
an original life and force, and infinitely superior to 



76 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

them, would not of themselves move except under 
the influence of " spirit," the essence of God him- 
self. 

We claim that spirit, under the will of Deity, is 
the primary author of all conscious life and motion, 
and that the two next principles are physical, and are 
the instruments or elements used in enlarging and 
perpetuating the same, through the organization of 
mind and unconscious life-like matter, in all condi- 
tions ; and that these primary energies are endowed 
with all the properties of continuous secondary forces 
through all evolution, combination, or agglomeration 
known in animal or physical matter. 

" The principles enunciated by Democritus," says 
Tyndall, " reveal his uncompromising antagonism to 
those who deduced the phenomena of nature from the 
caprices of the gods." 

" That great enigma, ? the exquisite adaptation of 
one part of an organism to another part, and to the 
conditions of life,' more especially the construction of 
the human body, Democritus made no attempt to 
solve. Empedocles, a man of more fiery and poetic 
nature, introduced the notion of love and hate among 
the atoms to account for their combination and sepa- 
ration. Noticing this gap in the doctrine of Democ- 
ritus, he struck in with the penetrating thought, 
linked, however, with some wild speculation, that it 
lay in the very nature of those combinations which 
were suited to their ends (in other words, in harmony 
with their environment) to maintain themselves, 
while unfit combination, having no proper habitat, 
must rapidly disappear. Thus more than two thou- 



MECHANICAL EVOLUTION 1 . 77 

sand years ago the doctrine of the r survival of the 
fittest,' which in our day, not on the basis of vague 
conjecture, but of positive knowledge, has been 
raised to such extraordinary significance, had received 
at all events partial enunciation."* 

Democritus had all the advantages of wealth and 
extended power and influence to secure the best 
education of his. time, and his great thirst for knowl- 
edge led him studiously to improve the opportunity. 
But his mind was a negative one, which, like that of 
his great admirer Bacon, the metaphysical and mate- 
rial philosopher of later times, did not easily soar 
above the consciousness, impulses, and appetites en- 
gendered through ambitious desires for the gratifica- 
tion of the senses. Bacon has been called a pecula- 
tor and sycophant ; while Democritus was at least a 
spendthrift and willing dependant on his family, after 
running through his own liberal patrimony. His 
early boyhood, as history informs us, was divided be- 
tween the study of theology and astronomy under the 
instruction of Chaldean tutors, — two studies which 
Professor Tyudall, in this day, would probably not 
think well adapted to develop a mind of tender age. 
Leucippus is said to have taught him his system of 
atoms and of vacuum. He travelled into many parts 
of the world, where he found learned men, visited the 
priests of Egypt, from whom he studied geometry, and 
continued his travels to Persia, India, and Ethiopia for 
conference with the Gymnasophists. On his return, 
his general knowledge gave him position, and his neg- 
ative mind and arrogance commanded tribute from the 



♦Lauge. 



78 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

ignorant and superstitious. He became a magistrate 
of distinction, but was most fond of the administration 
of laws of his own making. He treated life as a farce ; 
in this, as well as in natural mirthfulness, he was un- 
like Bacon ; but on the whole, though believing in a 
God and the immortality of the soul, he did not pos- 
sess those qualities which would establish his character 
as a guide to posterity, and he made few happy dur- 
ing his life. The age in which he lived was one of 
superstition and thirst for power, and his teachings 
were not suited to enlighten the darkness of the one, 
or allay or satisfy the selfishness of the other, con- 
sidered either in a religious, scientific, or philosoph- 
ical sense. He died a recluse at an advanced age, — 
mentally, if not physically, blind. 

We cannot see how Professor Tyndall supports or 
even improves his argument by bringing forward the 
name of Epicurus, who, though a student of Democ- 
ritus, and to a certain extent adopting his philosophy, 
was different from him in every respect. The former 
was a poor boy, and a modest and retiring student ; 
while the latter was rich and arrogant, and all 
through life showed the characteristics of a pam- 
pered mind. Epicurus had the reputation of living 
a "pure and serene life, and died a peaceful death." 
The first principles of his philosophy as laid down 
were atoms, space, and gravity; but he did not 
deny the existence of Spirit, or God, though he 
thought it beneath the dignity of Deity to concern 
himself about human affairs. This certainly shows a 
modesty and self-abasement not manifested in the 
character of Democritus. He held him, nevertheless, 



MECHANICAL EVOLUTION. 79 

to use the words of an ancient writer, as a blessed, 
immortal being. Dispute arose early about the 
materiality or mentality of his theories of life, and 
two sects sprang up, the one claiming spiritual and 
the other material precedence in the pleasures recom- 
mended by the founder of the theory. Gassendi held 
that the " pleasure in which this philosopher has fixed 
the sovereign good " was nothing else but the highest 
tranquillity of mind in conjunction with the most per- 
fect health of bod} r , but others disagreed with him. 
One main object of Epicurus, according to Tyndall, 
was to free the world from superstition and the fear 
of death. " He adored the gods," says Tyndall, " but in 
the ordinary fashion." "The idea of divine power, 
properly purified, he thought an elevating one." In 
recognizing the divine Author, he lifted himself above 
the gods of heathen mythology, and thus only could 
satisfy "the special requirements of his own nature." 
w On one great point the mind of Epicurus was at 
peace : he neither sought nor expected here, or here- 
after, any personal profit from his relation to the 
gods." This is a sublime thought, and would antedate, 
in its reach and principle, not only the teachings, but 
the death and atonement, of Christ. 

Lucretius claims that the "mechanical shock of 
atoms " is the " all-sufficient cause of things," without 
defining the cause of the shock, the origin of the force, 
or the necessary momentum to accomplish its object 
in any given direction. "He also," says Professor 
Tyndall, "combats the notion that the constitution of 
nature has been in any way determined by intelli- 
gent design. The interaction of the atoms through- 



80 KELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

out infinite time rendered all manner of combinations 
possible." This is heresy against common-sense, for 
he further says, " The fit ones persisted, while the unfit 
ones disappeared." Not after deliberation did the 
atoms station themselves in the right place, nor did 
they bargain which motions they should assume. The 
first proposition of Democritus is, "From nothing 
comes nothing. Nothing that exists can be de- 
stroyed " ; and the second, " Nothing happens by 
chance." How does the Professor reconcile these 
contradictions? He makes the shock accidental, 
the formation without design, and withdraws the 
atoms not useful in the structure. What determines 
the "fit ones," what principle of "accident" could 
select and reject, and where do the unfit ones disap- 
pear to, when " nothing that exists can be destroyed " ? 
His grand conception of the atoms falling silently 
through immeasurable ranges of space and time sug- 
gested the nebulous hypothesis to Kant, its first pro- 
pounder. Atoms are supposed to be ponderable , physi- 
cal matter, yielding to the laws of gravity, and obeying 
the laws of attraction and repulsion. What more 
natural, under these laws, than that matter should 
attract matter, and aggregate it when floating in an 
unresisting medium; or that such should become 
changed at every step of progression from the highest 
to the lowest condition of molecular effort under 
known physical laws, without disputing the spirit 
force beyond, or claiming that the former were pri- 
mary and all-sufficient of themselves ? 

The creation, by both divine and human revelations, 
must have had a beginning, and the laws of nature a 



MECHANICAL EVOLUTION. 81 

system in their work. If we are able to discover the 
true workings of these laws in any one particular, 
our insight and comprehension of the rest enlarge. 

Imagination and ideality have their part to play, 
and may first aid to compass and measure them ; but 
intellectual research must establish and perfect them. 
We can build up a system, primarily, through our 
ideality, and may afterwards prove the same by 
reasoning and experiment. If we make mistakes 
in parts, or the whole, persevering research comes 
to our aid, and generally rewards us in finally arriv- 
ing at the truth. 

What we see of growth on our own earth convinces 
us of the possibility and even the facility of creating 
solid matter from volatile substances. The formation 
of the crystal on the top of high mountains, where 
there can be no influences other than magnetism be- 
low, and electricity in the atmosphere, and its con- 
stituents above, proves to us that a solid may be 
formed from fluids. Metals are dissolved and again 
precipitated with ease under favoring circumstancs. 
The action of actien upon ether, as a positive against 
a negative force in space, would not sec:n mysteri- 
ously improbable as compared with other changes in 
nature with which we are familiar. A product must 
result differing from the conflicting forces, and this 
may be in many forms. A solid or semi-solid may 
result, instead of volatile substances, endowed with 
other generative and alterative principles. Solid 
nebulous matter may be formed, immediately about 
and around which the more volatile properties may 
cling, creating other changes from the nature of their 



82 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

own powers, and which may be augmented from 
other accumulating actienic and etheric decomposi- 
tions taking place. But all these transformations 
will not account for, or prove, a life principle within 
themselves; the intelligence must come from be- 
yond, — the great resource of matter, which is 
spirit. 

" Materialism," says Sargent, " would still be con- 
fronted by the same problem, even if it were to dis- 
cover a law that would explain the universe. For 
the law itself and the law-maker would have to be 
explained in their turn. Natural evolution through 
periods of time not to be reckoned requires an intel- 
ligent Force to account for it, just as much as would 
an instantaneous act of creation. The argument from 
design, based on analogies with the works of human 
artificers, is not needed. We must learn to look for 
divine perfection, not in the particular and frag- 
mentary things of time, but in the universals of 
eternity; since here, conditioned as we are, there 
can be, in the very nature of things, no light without 
darkness, no good without evil, no truth without 
error, no progress without imperfection. The wise 
•man says, ? Trust and wait.' The man not wise 
says, * Since I can see no sign that God has acted as 
I would have acted in his place, there can be no 
God!' 

" We have seen that spiritual and all other facts of 
Science are ' tending to resolve our conception of 
matter into that of force. Even Professor Huxley 
admits thus much. "He says : ? Undoubtedly, active 
force is inconceivable, except as a state of conscious- 



MECIIAXICAL EVOLUTION. 83 

ness, . . . except as something comparable to 
volition.' 

" The domain of Science is bounded by the region 
of second causes ; and therefore the idea of a First 
Cause, of God, can never be scientifically excluded or 
repressed. 'If,' says Professor Le Comte, e in tracing 
the chain of causes upward, we stop at any cause or 
force or principle, that force or principle becomes 
for us God, since it is an efficient agent controlling 
the universe.' 

" In order to be something more than mere Scep- 
ticism, and to offer a consistent theory of the universe, 
Atheism must abandon its negative form for a posi- 
tive ; and it cannot do this except by merging itself 
in the materialistic theory. 

" TTe assume that something or other unmade and 
without beginning has existed from all eternity ; for 
whatever exists must have its sufficient cause, either 
in itself or out of itself, since nothing can come from 
nothing, whatever Scepticism may say to the con- 
trary. 

" This self-existent something, is it unorganized 
matter, or is it undirected force, or is it a combina- 
tion of the two ? " 



ESSAY VI. 

TRUTH AND SOPHISTRY. 

According to Prof. Tyndall, the sophists of Ath- 
ens," did their work," and " ran through their career." 
Nowadays we have the same class, who not only are 
trying to do their own work, but are attempting to 
furnish work and principles for others. These are 
generally materialists and metaphysicians, selfish, 
cold, and dogmatic, who always claim to be the aris- 
tocracy of Science, but whom, be it said to his last- 
ing credit, Prof. Tyndall has done much to humble. 

While overthrowing many of their structures, how- 
ever, he has used some of the old material as his own, 
which he will probably find will be the first to decay, 
and thus imperil the new, that otherwise might be 
enduring. "Whewell," says Tyndall, "makes many 
wise and brave remarks regarding the spirit of the 
Middle Ages. It was a menial spirit. The seekers 
after natural knowledge had forsaken that fountain 
of living waters, the direct appeal to nature by ob- 
servation and experiment, and had given themselves 
up to the remanipulation of the notions of their pred- 
ecessors. It was a time when thought had become 
abject, and when the acceptance of mere authority 
led, as it always does in Science, to intellectual death. 



TRUTH AND SOPHISTRY. 85 

Natural events, instead of being traced to physical, 
were referred to moral causes, while an exercise of 
the fantasy, almost as degrading as the Spiritualism 
of the present day, took the place of scientific specu- 
lation. Then came the mysticism of the Middle 
Ages, — Magic, Alchemy, the Neo-Platonic Philoso- 
phy, with its visionary though sublime abstractions, 
which caused men to look with shame upon their 
own bodies as hinderances to the absorption of the 
creature in the blessedness of the Creator. 

" Finally came the Scholastic Philosopy, a fusion, 
according to Lan<re, of the least mature notions of 
Aristotle with the Christianity of the West. Intel- 
lectual immobility was the result. As a traveller 
without a compass in a fog may wander long, imag- 
ining he is making way, and find himself, after hours 
of toil, at his starting-point; so the schoolmen, hav- 
ing tied and untied the same knots, and formed and 
dissipated the same clouds, found themselves, at the 
end of centuries, in their old position." 

The Sophists had the reputation of pursuing Phi- 
losophy more for gain than for the love of truth itself, 
but no such charge can be made against Professor 
Tyndall. Like Pythagoras, he declined to take their 
name, and does not sympathize with their principles. 
From the fact that Pythagoras' own sentiments and 
principles were so high, it is presumed that the 
Sophists must have belonged to an entirely different 
class in mind and principle. w Pythagoras instituted," 
Thirlwald, "a philosophical school, a religious 
brotherhood, and a political association, which was 
composed of young men of the noblest families, not 



86 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

exceeding three hundred in number." This would 
a;t least indicate that he had a religious principle, 
and was not an atheist ; for he believed that the soul 
was immortal, and that the highest aim and blessed- 
ness of man is likeness to Deity. Socrates, Plato, 
and Aristotle, Euclid, Archimedes, and Hipparchus, 
each in turn accomplished a work for ancient Greece, 
the results of which are very much felt by the whole 
civilized world of the present clay. This long line 
of philosophers, to whom the world owes so much, 
cannot in any sense be classed as infidels or atheists, 
for they taught principles of morals, religion, im- 
mortality of the soul, and belief in Deity, and did 
much to clear away the clouds of Materialism which 
at times overhung Greece and Rome. Professor 
Tyndall says, "The science of ancient Greece had 
already cleared the world of the fantastic images of 
divinities operating capriciously through natural 
phenomena." It is fair to infer that the religious 
element which existed in the minds of these distin- 
guished philosophers did as much to allay an unnat- 
ural superstition as it did the scientific part of their 
teachings ; for Religion and Science, when prop- 
erly united, and acknowledging a belief in the im- 
mortality of the soul and the existence of Deity, 
should be able to make clear to the mind of man the 
genuine truth, from the fact that both principles are 
natural and indispensable allies to human progress. 
It is not to be presumed that all of these philoso- 
phers possessed the same sentiments, either upon 
scientific or religious principles. Socrates had his 
Doemon, Plato his Idea, Aristotle his Nous; and 



TRUTH AND SOPHISTRY. 87 

the same principle, says Dr. Hitchman, would apply 
to more modern philosophers. Pritchard would have 
his vital principle; Darwin, the primordial germ; 
Tyndall, the polar molecules, and, we may also add, 
scepticism ; Huxley, his protoplasm ; and Hooker, the 
Dionian, carnivorous plant. Wherever such minds 
have worked unprejudiced by preconceived dogma- 
tisms, the religious idea has enlightened instead 
of darkened the human mind in its comprehensions 
and its illustrations. Professor Tyndall, in speaking 
of the progress of Science in those days, asks, 
" What, then, stopped its victorious advance? Why 
was the scientific intellect compelled, like an ex- 
hausted soil, to lie fallow for nearly two millenniums 
before it could regather the elements necessary to its 
fertility and strength ? " He has answered it better 
than Bacon or Whewell, so far as it goes. Rome and 
the other cities of the empire had fallen into moral 
putrefaction . " Christianity had appeared, offering the 
Gospel to the poor, and by moderation, if not ascet- 
icism of life, practically protesting against the profli- 
gacy of the age. The sufferings of the early Chris- 
tians, and the extraordinary exaltation of mind 
which enabled them to triumph, over the diabolical 
tortures to which they were subjected, must have left 
traces not easily effaced. They scorned the earth in 
view of that building of God, that house not made 
with hands, eternal in the heavens." The chronology 
of time happily creates a division, and separates 
these answers. Will the Professor for a moment 
contend that the downfall of Rome and other cities 
of the empire — which he said had fallen into moral 



88 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

putrefaction, the working principles of which pre- 
ceded the advent and death of Christ — could have 
been in any manner accelerated by that coming 
event ? Or were not the words " moral putrefaction " 
sufficient of themselves to cloud and virtually destroy 
the progress of that Science which had been so bril- 
liant in the before-named ancient cities during the 
lapse of the last five hundred years before Christ? 
Does he need any further reasons than those illus- 
trated, as connected with the previous decay of these 
cities, other than what might exist outside any of 
the previous sentiments of true Religion, which have 
ever been taught either before or since ? 

Does Professor Tynclall contend that Christianity, 
as a principle, from the day of its birth until the 
present time, has had anything to do with the want 
of success in scientific teaching? Has bigotry and 
superstition, which pure Religion ever rejects, as 
false claimants to a religious principle, done as much 
to retard Science as the dogmatism of material 
scientists has done to retard real Science, or the 
principles of true Religion co-existent with that age ? 
Again, is not the bigotry as sometimes exemplified 
by infidel scientists, as strong as any which has ever 
existed on religious subjects, and would it not, if it 
had its way, be as severe and cruel in its punishment 
as that wicked institution, the Inquisition itself? 

What though Archbishop Boniface was shocked 
at the assumption of a world of human beings out of 
reach of the means of salvation ? Or that Augustine, 
while admitting the rotundity of the earth, would 
deny the possible'existence of inhabitants oil the other 



TRUTH AXD SOPHISTRY. 89 

side, because no such race is recorded in Scripture 
among the descendants of Adam ? Is it remarkable 
that two good men should suffer their hearts to be 
the interpreter of their brains, or that they should 
have chosen what they understood to be a divine law 
as their guide instead of a material one? 

Was the moral or scientific obliquity of Augustine, 
while comprehending in his age only a part of science, 
in the admission that the earth was round, though 
denying a tact in history not revealed to his mind 
through the code in which he put the most confidence, 
any greater or more easily shown than in that of the 
error of the material scientist of to-day, who does not 
admit a God, or that spirit, in the sense the Christian 
understands it, has any existence or connection with 
life and matter? 

Is not Prof. Tyndall aware that many of the as- 
sumptions of professional scientists, in this age, strike 
even the educated and practical mind as more absurd 
than the denial of Augustine, fifteen hundred years 
ago? 

He denied a fact for the want of what he termed 
inspirational confirmation. Scientists often make 
great mistakes, as well as assume or adopt improbable 
conclusions, with all the advantages of education and 
knowledge which great wealth, and more than two 
thousand years' experience, have given them. The 
new and startling assumptions, which are not easily 
contradicted, are published to the world with all the 
enthusiasm of a crusader, and they do not deny the 
reception of homage for the assurance of the dawn of 
a new truth, even before it is proved. 



90 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

The discovery of error, though at times important 
and startling, is not published with much spirit or 
gusto, but on the other hand is often suffered, like the 
painful carbuncle, to slough itself slowly off, when 
the system will bear the poison, no longer. In Sci- 
ence, however, the revelations of previous errors 
affect the whole world, while physical pain may be 
borne by but one. 

We have been taught from childhood that the dis- 
tance of the earth from the sun was, in round 
numbers, 95,000,000 of miles; but recently, how- 
ever, with no additional light upon which to base the 
real estimate, it has been reduced to 91,000,000. 
Perhaps with 1875 we shall have still another and 
a more accurate estimate. In the mean time, little 
has been said about it by scientists, and less com- 
plaint even has been made by educated laymen, 
though in this change they recognize an enormous 
difference in the size of the sun and planets, pro- 
ducing its corresponding change in the weight, 
density, gravity, and attractive and repulsive forces 
in matter, which of themselves, if taken as a positive, 
necessary, and invariable standard in the practical 
application of the industrial arts in the past, would 
upset the whole system and routine of the social 
industry of to-day. How does this mysterious but 
grave error in calculation look alongside of the dis- 
pute between two distinguished scientists in Europe, 
as to whether the retardations of the moon in her 
revolutions during the past two thousand years have 
been a sixty-fourth or a thirty-third part of a second 
of time? On the other hand, it is quite doubtful 



TRUTH AND SOPHISTRY. 91 

if in the propagation of any new religious principle, 
at any age of the world, there was ever, within the 
same time, an eighth part of the amount of money 
or mental energy expended as has been during the 
last five years in advancing and proving the claimed 
revelations of one single instrument, the spectro- 
scope, used in scientific investigation, the truths or 
developments of which are yet but very imperfectly 
proved, to say the least. The spectroscope has taken 
the world by surprise. Its claimed revelations in 
Science are marvellous and startling ; and though 
not one person in one hundred, even of the educated 
classes, as yet understands its mysterious teachings, 
the world is expected to take it in at once, or, at 
least, admit its claims on the authority of others, 
who follow and proclaim its wonders with as much 
assurance, if not arrogance, as was ever found in any 
religious reformer since the days of Democritus. 

There is mystery with regard to some physical 
wonders yet to be revealed ; these are continually 
opening, and, strange to say, their discovery is often 
closety connected with some new necessity of man. 
Is this chance, or an answer simply to the researches 
under many daily needs? Or is it a timely revela- 
tion of Deity, who comprehends real from imaginary 
wants, and is ever ready to supply them at the 
proper time? 

Some of the revelations of Science seem only to 
open a school for intellectual development, while 
many others provide for the material wants of man. 

In the advent of the former is often found elements 
of speculation which feed the more material mind ; 



92 EEL1GI0N AND SCIENCE. 

seemingly, however, as yet, they are not closely 
woven with the needs of society ; while in the latter a 
perfect blending takes place between the understand- 
ing and elements of use of cause and effect. We 
have as yet been denied the knowledge of an open 
Polar Sea, or the real condition of the Arctic and 
Antarctic Poles. 

Perhaps the necessities of man do not yet require 
that knowledge ; and yet so far as effort is concerned, 
and the expenditure of money or life, the supposed 
advantages of such revelation have already been more 
than counterbalanced. What remains ? An impulse 
seemingly inherent in man to dive into the Poles, and 
solve the great mystery. We do not know Professor 
TynclaH's views of what may be revealed there, yet 
venture the opinion that whatever theories he may 
adopt as to a solid or open Pole, they would be 
contradicted by others, and with good reasoning, that 
may all be done away with when the necessities of 
man require the knowledge. 



ESSAY VII. 

SCIENCE AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 

Professor Tyndall complains that the religious 
influence of the Middle Ages was a drawback to 
scientific progress. But from the days of Democritus 
to the beginning of the Middle Ages there was a 
period of nearly one thousand years, at least as event- 
ful as any other equal length of time in the history of 
the world. During this time occurred the careers of 
the distinguished leaders from Alexander toBelisarius, 
with all the changes of government brought about by 
wars or through political intrigues, with their influ- 
ences upon Science or the industrial arts, as well as 
upon Religion ; and it is presumed that the human 
inirid was as active and comprehensive as during any 
other period. From the time of the partition of the 
Roman Empire, to the establishment of the Eastern 
or Greek Empire, the learned men or scientists had 
as much or more to do with the direction, at least in 
an advisory capacity, as any other class, and were as 
much responsible for the extremes of intellectual and 
material aspiration as were the warriors and military 
leaders. During that period the Greeks placed them- 
selves, in the cultivation of letters and the arts, in 
the first rank of civilized nations, even if their reli- 



94 EELIGION AXD SCIENCE. 

gious views were not of the sublimest character, or 
the best suited to perpetuate an age of such material 
prosperity. 

If we should leave Egypt, Syria, Persia, Eome, 
and Greece behind, with all that was evolved from 
their history and experience as to the true develop- 
ment of Science and Religion, and for a moment trace 
the Gauls and Celts across the Alps, with their war- 
like propensities, appetites, and passions, wc find a 
religious conviction, a belief in the immortality of 
the soul, and a ruling Deity preceding, but not cloud- 
ing, their scientific acquirements, and travelling hand 
in hand in reciprocal progressive impulses. Druids 
though they were, they early made great progress in 
the establishment of the true principles of Science 
and Philosophy, many of which hold good to the 
present day, — the offspring of their religious im- 
pulses, superstitious as they may have been. Their 
religious festivals directed them to the acquisition of 
the knowledge of heavenly bodies in the computa- 
tions of yearly lunations, which gives ground for the 
opinion that they had knowledge of the solar year. 
Even in Ireland, relics have been found which are 
deemed to be astronomical instruments to show the 
phases of the moon. Astrology, divination, and 
magic may have been mixed up with their science, as 
in the case of other nations, yet there is no evidence 
that this was a result of a religious belief. In medi- 
cine they were more superstitious than in other 
branches of science ; and this was nothing new in 
nationalities of that period, neither is it in our own ; 
for the fundamental principles of medical jurispru- 



SCIENCE AXD THE MIDDLE AGES. 95 

deuce as an exact law are no better established to-day 

than they were in the early days of Esculapius. The 

sacred, mystic character attributed by the Druids 
to many of the plants indigenous to their own soil, 
was only equalled by the sublimity of some of their 
conceptions of cure. The mistletoe was an antidote 
for all poisons. According to Pliny, as soon as it 
was discovered upon the oak, the Druids collected 
in crowds about the tree ; a priest in white vest- 
ments ascended, and with a knife of gold cut the 
mistletoe, which was received by another standing on 
the ground ; sacrifices were offered up, and the day 
spent in rejoicings. All this from a people who were 
as fierce and warlike as the American savage, and 
who "hunsr the heads of the slain in their battles to 
their horses' manes ; while in many of their houses 
might be seen, nailed up as an heir-loom, the skull 
of some person of rank who had fallen before them 
in battle." Such a people, acknowledging a Deity 
and possessing a religion, as well as a knowledge of 
some fundamental principles in science, came to 
civilized and scientific Rome, and for the time over- 
threw it. Science nearly perished in Rome, but cer- 
tainly not through an}' religious fanaticism. "The 
oppressive rate of interest, the power which the 
creditors still possessed, and not unfrequently exer- 
cised, of life and death over the debtor, had reduced 
the lower orders to desperation." The instrument 
of usury is a later and a more piercing instrument to. 
the heart and life of human progress than any princi- 
ple emanating from true religion. It was not Camii- 
lus, the patrician peculator, but Manlius, who through 



96 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

pure feelings of humanity interposed to save Rome. 
The patricians, however, impeached the latter and 
sought his death ; and a slave treacherously pushed 
him down the Tarpseau Rock. War and human sel- 
fishness in those days had much more to do with the 
prostration of Science than superstitious belief. It 
was through the aid of Greek mercenaries that Egypt 
once again became a Persian province. It was the 
"progress of the Tarentines in luxury which led 
to their ruin," which was not less rapid than their 
advances in literature and refinement. 

The barbarisms of Rome disappeared under the influ- 
ence of the philosophy and literature of Greece, but 
this was succeeded by the greatest drawback to science 
the world ever knew. The Romans had extended 
slavery, that scourge of the East, all over Italy, and 
slave labor had replaced that of the freeman. It was 
not Religion that instigated this, but human selfish- 
ness, and this brought about the servility of the age. 
The desolating wars for three centuries preceding the 
Christian Era were sufficient to crush out nearly all 
elements of either science or religion that were not 
grounded upon firm principles, though in the devas- 
tating paraphernalia of the wars of that period, much 
more of science than religion was heard of. Under 
the new impulse of the Christian religion, more of 
reverence for Deity and of a higher order became 
apparent, than had shown itself through the material 
and dazzling brightness of the civilized and enlight- 
ened cities of the East. While politics were work- 
ing their decrees for nearly five hundred years before 
the advent of the Middle Ages, or what is termed 



SCIENCE AXD THE MIDDLE AGES. 97 

the Middle Ages, a religious spirit grew up, 
which tended in its influence to promote scientific 
investigation wherever an over-zealous fanaticism did 
not impede its course. 

But travelling through the further history of 
Rome, the whole East, as well as Gaul and Britain 
and the North Countries, it is fair to claim that 
religious conviction, a belief in the immortality of 
the soul and its relations to Deity, did more for 
true Science than any other impulse not connected 
with immediate necessities of man in providing his 
own bread and meat. So that, beginning with the 
Middle Ages at the sixth century, the evidences 
of both Science and Religion, as revealed in histoiy, 
have a fair chance to speak for themselves in the 
further progress of human life. The natural ten- 
dency of the human mind is to extremes and ex- 
aggeration ; its intuitional and intellectual impulses 
are often in conflict and at variance in the march for 
ascendancy and supremacy. This, of course, arises 
from the predominance of one of these faculties over 
the other, before the mind becomes balanced under 
the proper use of each. This conflict is a battle of 
spirit with matter, in which to a certain extent neither 
are right, and in which both in the end must make 
concessions. The brain is the throne from which 
the practical law for man should be proclaimed, but 
reason should control. That is the great regulator 
of a true life. But all the evidence should be brought 
in before the decision on a line of duty, especialty where 
there is a conflict of purpose. The highest intui- 
tional emotion has its counterpart in material instinct 
7 



98 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

with which to bring up the claims of mind upon mat- 
ter for judgment ; and it is no cloud upon spirit, nei- 
ther a denial of matter, to say that Divinity is the 
Author of both, yet demands in a union that harmony 
of purpose, fitness in action, and end in view which 
shall ever prove the acknowledgment of infinity in 
all the relations of life between spirit and matter. 
Dr. Tynclall's claim for science does not seem to ad- 
mit this principle. But little can be said favorably 
of sophists, strictly speaking, either of this or of old 
Athenian days. Now as then they are often paid for 
services in upholding the principles of pure selfish- 
ness and materialism in some form, which, in the 
end, prove valuable neither to morals, religion, nor 
science. 

Aristotle needed impressibility, and it was just 
this lack that would have made him a more enthu- 
siastic religionist. Some of the highest intellectual 
philosophers, who believed in the immortality of the 
soul and a religious life, were led more by the 
material impulses of < the intellect than the spiritual, 
and hence the seeming doubt thrown over their 
spiritual life. This is true of the present age. What 
Professor Tyndall terms imagination, however, does 
not account for the lack. It is inspiration, " impres- 
sibility," or the influx of a high " spiritual life " to 
the brain, borrowing force from external instead of 
internal emotion. 

The spread of the Christian religion was opposed 
by the various governments of the Middle Ages. 
Churches were early founded in Rome, Corinth, 
Crete, Antioch, Asia Minor, Britain, and Spain. 



SCIENCE AXD THE MIDDLE AGES. 99 

Persecution sprang up on every hand, and the revolt- 
ing spectacles of torture were daily seen in almost 
every community. " The rage of the Jews brought 
down the cruel torments of Nero. Some of them," 
says Tacitus, "were covered over with skins of wild 
beasts that they might be torn to pieces by dogs ; 
and others were daubed over with combustible 
materials, and were set up for lights in the night- 
time, and thus burnt to death." The younger Pliny, 
in his letter to Trojan, A. D. 107, shows that death 
was immediately inflicted upon every one who was 
convicted of belonging to the Christian sect. The 
wisest and most humane of the heathen emperors was 
the most fatal to it. During the reign of Maximin, a 
promiscuous massacre of Christians of all sexes and 
ages took place. Diocletian demolished the churches 
and burnt the sacred books. Gallerius continued 
the persecution with unmitigated severity ; " but the 
fervent spirit of religion was far from yielding to this 
violent shock." It will bo seen from these illustra- 
tions that the Christian religion did not darken 
science, but those who believed in science or patron- 
ized it under the old school, were enemies of religion. 
Still it increased, under all the trials of persecution, 
and extended through all Europe, where it has since 
been maintained. From Belisarius to Henry the 
Eighth, the principal occupation of the world, or at 
least the leading one, was war. The religious per- 
secutions Avcre against Christianity, and the Chris- 
tians were not the opposers but the nourishers of 
science during the Middle Ages. It may properly be 
said that in some cases heresies of the acknowledged 



100 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

principles of science were suppressed under the 
dominion of Church rule ; this extended but a little 
way, and towards some who had been leaders in the 
Church. The mass of the people were free, and acted, 
so far as their intelligence allowed them, as freely as 
they do to-day in the exercise of their opinions and 
belief. It is said of Charlemauge that "he was 
ignorant of the first principles of science till middle 
age, therefore much could not be expected from him. 
He gathered about him the learned of every country, 
and founded an academy," and established laws 
favorable to the clergy — at that time the sole depos- 
itaries and dispensers of learning. The library of 
Alexandria was destroyed by Arabians, not by Chris- 
tians. The libraries of Syria shared a like fate. 
" In the monastic schools " the relics of science found 
an asylum. The crusades, chivalry, and the Chris- 
tian religion gave the impulse of advancement, and 
opened the way to emerge from the Dark Ages. 
Navigation derived great benefit from the experience 
necessitated by the crusades, and commerce shared 
in the gain ; while the productions of nature and art, 
before unknown in the West, called forth, fresh indus- 
try and new enjoyments. Des Michaels says, " Gen- 
eral civilization was advanced by new international 
relations, and the progress of science and literature. 
Ideas of honor and courtesy spread from chivalry 
into society generally, softening the public manners. 
The advances made by the sciences of geography, 
history , and medicine were important in giving a new 
impulse to geographical research and wonder." The 
invention of the mariners' compass, and the process 



SCIENCE AND THE MIDDLE AGES. 101 

of manufacturing linen paper, together with the 
growth of manufactures, fibrous and metallic; the 
arts of making gunpowder and printing; the dis- 
covery of America and the revival of the fine arts, — 
lit up, as if by magic, the close of the Middle Ages, 
and laid the foundation of the great scientific im- 
provements of the present age. During the Middle 
Ages something had been done to dispute the " menial 
spirit " attributed to them by Professor Tyndall in his 
quotation of Whewell, " for," says White, " the 
Church of St. Mark, at Venice, was completed in 
1071. Notre Dame, in Paris, was founded in 1163, 
and occupied one hundred years in building. West- 
minster Chapel was built in 1220, while from the 
fall of Charlemagne there was a long period of 
violence and ignorance during which the Islands of 
Britain and Ireland claim the houor of shelter- 
ing the exiled learning of Europe," while the 
establishment of Christianity alone preserved the 
remains of ancient literature, which found a refuge 
in monastic institutions. Oxford was a flourishing 
school in about 1200, and Cambridge was incorpo- 
rated in 1231. 



ESSAY VIII. 

ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 

"The strain upon the mind," says Professor Tyn- 
dall, " during the stationary period towards ultra-ter- 
restrial things, to the neglect of problems close at 
hand, was sure to provoke reaction. But the reaction 
was gradual ; for the ground was dangerous, a power 
being at hand competent to crush the critic who went 
too far. To elude this power and still allow oppor- 
tunity for the expression of opinion, the doctrine of 
? twofold truth ' was invented, according to which an 
opinion might be held { theologically ' and the oppo- 
site opinion f philosophically.' Thus in the thir- 
teenth century the creation of the world in six days, 
and the unchangeableness of the individual soul, 
which had been so distinctly affirmed by St. Thomas 
Aquinas, were both denied philosophically, but ad- 
mitted to be true as articles of the Catholic faith. 
When Protagoras uttered the maxim which brought 
upon him so much vituperation, that f opposite asser- 
tions are equally true,' he simply meant that human 
beings differed so much from each other that what 
was subjectively true to the one might be subjectively 
untrue to the other. The great sophist never meant 
to play fast and loose with the truth by saying that 






ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 103 

one or two opposite assertions, made by the same 
individual, could possibly escape being a lie. It was 
not f sophistry,' but the dread of theologic ven- 
geance, that generated this double-dealing with con- 
viction ; and it is astonishing to notice what lengths 
were possible to men who were adroit in the use of 
artifices of this kind." 

As before remarked, the great strain upon the 
human mind, during the Middle Ages, was not " ultra- 
terrestrial," but material. The scientific idea — separ- 
ate, alone — was very little persecuted by the Church. 
Where it was pursued outside of that institution and 
by those who had not been members, little attention 
was paid to scientific investigation, unless it was con- 
sidered contradictory of a religious but not a previ- 
ous scientific faith. Protagoras was banished from 
Athens as an atheist, not as a scientist ; and the 
maxim of his, that "opposite assertions are equally 
true," would to-day, if taken literally, prove him 
such. With Professor Tyndall's explanation of the 
ancient sophist's meaning, a new construction may be 
put upon his words. This might also apply to some of 
Professor Tyndall's ideas, if he thought it of conse- 
quence to explain them more fully. It was not the 
love of science, then, but the dread of the priests, that 
gave origin to the " twofold truth " set up by the 
sophists. They were teaching the world to "falsify " 
through "fear "of persecution. This imputation has 
sometimes been cast upon the priesthood, with the 
simple exception that they were to lie for their reli- 
gion, not for science. Giordano Bruno, the bold phi- 
losopher of Italy, was burned for heresy, not for his 



104 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

love for, or belief in, science. The Dominican monk, 
the pantheist, the disciple of Calvin, and the censurer 
of monastic institutions, the tract ucer of what they 
thought the true church, at last fell under the jealous 
power of the Inquisition at Venice, which, however, 
handed him over to the civil powers that had the 
honor of leading Bruno to the stake. 

Are sects charitable towards seceders at the pres- 
ent day? Are scientists forgiving of heresies in 
their own order ? Was animal magnetism recognized 
or established as a law of science without effort or 
bitter contradiction? Were the committee of savans, 
appointed by the French government in 1784 to 
examine the theories of Frederic Anton Mesmer, 
members of the church? Were they not appointed 
as distinguished material scientists, opposed to the 
recognition of spiritual laws? Four physicians, and 
the distinguished names of Franklin, Leroi, Bailly, 
DeBory, and Lavoisier, assented to an unfavorable 
report " not only to the truth of animal magnetism, 
but to its morality." Were not Jeremy Bentham's 
philanthropical and philosophical ideas rejected by 
his peers in legal jurisprudence, while they were 
more favored by religionists? Have the scientists 
of Europe or America ever forgiven the justly dis- 
tinguished Professor Hare of Pennsylvania, or the in- 
defatigable Professor Mapes of New Jersey, for their 
heresies, in the examination, and final adoption of 
the principles of Spiritualism, which Professor Tyn- 
dall denounces so highly? Has Robert Dale Owen, 
or Judge Edmonds of New York, fared any better 
under the scathing blasts of unbelievers, who have 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 105 

not, perhaps, examined any of the phenomena they 
so studiously investigated? In fact, is dogmatism, 
fanaticism, jealousy, or persecution any more preva- 
lent in the church than in scientific societies or 
social unions? 

Professor Tyndall further says, " Christendom had 
become sick of the school of philosophy and its verbal 
wastes, which led to no issue, but left the intellect 
in everlasting haze. Here and there he heard the 
voice of one impatiently crying in the wilderness, 
'Not unto Aristotle, not unto subtle hypothesis, 
not unto Church, Bible, or blind tradition, must 
we turn for a knowledge of the universe, but to 
the direct investigation of nature by observation 
and experiment.' " This is just what had been done 
in previous ages. Materialists had become disgusted 
with their own works, as they are always sure to do 
in time. The productions of Science without Religion 
are always dry skeletons ; they uot only lack flesh and 
blood, but life and motion. 

If half the time and money had been expended by 
the inhabitants of the great cities of the East in rational 
pursuits, under a proper religious influence, that was 
devoted to ministering to the intellectual and material 
senses, both high and low, — the building of huge, 
unnecessary structures of pride and folly ; the min- 
istrations to ambition, jealousy, and animal appetites, 
where no semblance of spirituality existed or was 
ever manifest, — it is quite doubtful whether these 
cities might not have been flourishing to-day, and 
never have been attacked and destroyed by barbarian 
invaders. Christendom had become sick of Material 



106 KELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Philosophy, — of hewn stones, however large, without 
cement, of bricks without mortar, of marble images 
without life, of intellect without soul, of mind with- 
out spirit. The thirst was for life, for love, for wor- 
ship, — for a labor that satisfied the highest ideal of 
man in his duty to himself and his God. Science ever 
points out the way, but Religion must travel it with 
her, never for a moment turning back. They need to go 
hand in hand ; and then life's journey will be, what 
God designed it, a constant and conscious blessing to 
man. 

Says Sargent : " The unity of all phenomena was 
the dream of ancient Philosophy. To reduce all this 
multiplicity of things to a single principle has been, 
and continues to be, the ever-recurring problem. 
Water, air, fire, the primary elements, were severally 
and collectively imagined, by the great thinkers of 
antiquity, as the original factor. 

"To the question of a unity of substance, Greek 
Science repeatedly applied itself. 

"The innumerable varieties in forms, qualities, and 
habits, in both the vegetable and animal kingdoms, 
suggest the existence of forces adequate to the pro- 
duction of all the differentiations in nature. Hence to 
mount to the scientific conception of a single force as 
the originator and regulator of all these minor forces 
is the legitimate effort of all profound thought on the 
subject. 

" It was this craving for unity which led the white 
men of Asia, the ancient Aryan race, to the conception 
of God as the one substance immanent in the universe. 
At first they were polytheists, but with the progress 



ATOMIC COXCErXTONS. 107 

of thought their number of gods diminished, and the 
authors of the Yeda at last arrived at the conception 
of a unity of forces, of a Divine Power as the ulti- 
mate substratum of things . They regarded the beings 
of the world as, in effect, composed of two elements : 
the one real, of a nature permanent and absolute ; 
the other relative, flowing, variable, and phe- 
nomenal ; the one matter, the other spirit, but both 
proceeding from an inseparable unity, a single sub- 
stance. 

" The unity of physical forces is the point on which 
Science has its eyes now fixed. Materialism is not 
more eager than Spiritism for the proof. Already 
has it been demonstrated that heat, electricity, light, 
magnetism, chemical attraction, muscular energy, and 
mechanical work, are exhibitions of one and the same 
power acting through matter. That all these forces 
may be transformed into motion, and by motion 
reproduced, is now something more than an hy- 
pothesis." 

It was the religious spirit which made place for 
the discoveries of Copernicus, and drew a curtain 
before the skeleton pictures which had been left of 
Aristotle. As Professor Tyndall says, "The total 
crash of Aristotle's closed universe, with the earth at 
its centre, followed as a consequence; and ' The earth 
moves ! ' became a kind of watchword amon^ intel- 
lectual freemen." Copernicus was a Christian, be it 
remembered ; Bacon claimed to be ; and Descartes 
rejected the "notion of an atom, because it w\as 
absurd to suppose that God, if he so pleased, could 
not divide an atom." The latter philosopher was at 



108 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

home in material science, but his God was ever 
present. 

"During the Middle Ages," says Tyndall, "the 
doctrine of atoms had to all appearance vanished 
from discussion. In all probability it held its ground 
among sober-minded and thoughtful men, though 
neither the Church nor the world was prepared to 
hear of it with tolerance. Once, in the year 1348, 
it received distinct expression, but retraction by 
compulsion immediately followed; and thus dis- 
couraged, it slumbered till the seventeenth century, 
when it was revived by a contemporary and friend 
of Hobbes and Malmesbury, the orthodox Catholic 
provost ofDigne, Gassendi." 

Again the Church comes in to help Professor Tyn- 
dall carry atoms through the Middle Ages : — 

" Referring to the condition of the heathen, who 
sees a god behind every natural event, thus peopling 
the world with thousands of beings whose caprices 
are incalculable, Lange shows the impossibilhy of 
any compromise between such notions and those of 
Science, which proceeds on the assumption of never- 
changing law and causality. f But,' he continues, 
with characteristic penetration, e when the great 
thought of one God, acting as a unit upon the 
universe, has been seized, the connection of things, 
in accordance with the law of cause and effect, is not 
only thinkable, but it is a necessary consequence of 
the assumption. For when I see ten thousand wheels 
in motion, and know, or believe, that they are all 
driven by one, then I know that I have before me a 
mechanism, the action of every part of which is de- 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 109 

termined by the plan of the whole. So much being 
assumed, it follows that I may investigate the struc- 
ture of that machine, and the various motions of its 
parts. For the time being, therefore, this concep- 
tion renders scientific action free.' 

"Gassendi proceeds, as any heathen might do, to 
build up the world, and all that therein is, of atoms 
and molecules. God, who created earth and water, 
plants and animals, produced, in the first place, a 
definite number of atoms, which constituted the seed 
of all things. Then began that series of combinations 
and decompositions which goes on at present, and 
which will continue in future. The principle of every 
change resides in matter. In artificial productions 
the moving principle is different from the material 
worked upon ; but in nature the agent works within, 
being the most active and mobile part of the material 
itself. Thus this bold ecclesiastic, without incurring 
the censure of the Church or the world, contrives to 
outstrip Mr. Darwin. The same cast of mind which 
caused him to detach the Creator from his universe, 
led him also to detach the soul from the body, though 
to the body he ascribes an influence so large as to 
render the soul almost unnecessary." 

Professor Tyndall uses a singular argument to 
prove the independent life of atoms, by beginning, as 
he has made Gassendi do, in the above few lines, 
" God, who created earth and water," etc. etc. If 
the meaning of the Professor is that " In the be- 
ginning God created the heaven and the earth, 
and the earth was without form and void ; and 
darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the 



110 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters," 
bat produced in the first place a definite number of 
atoms, which constituted the seed of all things, we 
could not so easily dispute his theory, as it would not 
be inconsistent with the creation as a whole. We 
might ask his authority ; but the argument, if dis- 
puted, would have to be made up of the detail of facts 
legitimately belonging to Science, without denying 
the primary Author or the religion of man. 

"Accepting here the leadership of Kant," says 
Tyndall, " I doubt the legitimacy of Maxwell's logic ; 
but it is impossible not to feel the ethic glow with 
which his lecture concludes. There is, moreover, 
a very noble strain of eloquence in his description 
of the steadfastness of the atoms : 'Natural causes, 
as we know, are at work, which tend to modify, 
if they do not at length destroy, all the arrange- 
ments and dimensions of the earth and the whole 
solar system. But though in the course of ages 
catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur 
in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dis- 
solved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, 
the molecules out of which these systems are built 
— the foundation-stones of the material universe — 
remain unbroken and unworn.' " We disagree with 
Professor Tyndall on the non-changeableness of mole- 
cules. Imponderable molecules are ever changing and 
never at rest, while the ponderable, or atomic, par- 
take of the same influences of decomposition which 
apply to all solid, material matter. 

" The atomic doctrine, in whole or in part, was en- 
tertained by Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, New- 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. Ill 

ton, Boyle, and their successors, until the chemical 
law of multiple proportions enabled Dalton to confer 
upon it an entirely new significance. In our day 
there are secessions from the theory, hut it still 
stands firm. Loschmidt, Stoney, and Sir William 
Thomson have sought to determine the sizes of the 
atoms, or, rather, to fix the limits between which 
their sizes lie ; while only last year the discourses of 
Williamson and Maxwell illustrate the present hold 
of the doctrine upon foremost scientific minds. In 
fact, it may be doubted whether, wanting this funda- 
mental conception, a theory of the material universe 
is capable of scientific statement." 

It would seem fortunate that the chemical law of 
" multiple proportions " was discovered in time to 
enable Dalton to confer upon the " atomic " theory 
the necessary significance to save the material uni- 
verse from scientific excommunication. 

"The universe is not dead," says Sargent. "Think 
you this earth of ours is a lifeless, unsentient bulk, 
while the worm on her surface is in the enjoyment 
of life ? To an inquiry whether the soul is immortal, 
Apollonius, one of the greatest of the ancient medi- 
ums, replied, ' Yes, immortal — but like everything.' 

"These suns, systems, planets, and satellites are not 
mere mechanisms. The pulsations of a divine life 
throb in them all, and make them rich in the sense 
that they too are parts of the divine cosmos. Dis- 
solution, disintegration, and change are not death, 
while an immortal principle survives. 

" f Science,' says the Duke of Argyll, f in the mod- 
ern doctrine of conservation of energy and the con- 



112 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

vertibility of forces, is already getting a firm hold 
of the idea that all kinds of force are but forms of 
manifestations of one central force issuing from some 
one fountain-head of power.' Sir John Herschel has 
not hesitated to say, that ' it is but reasonable to 
regard the force of gravitation as the direct or in- 
direct result of a consciousness or a will existing 
somewhere.' 

" Even so orthodox a teacher as President Noah 
Porter comes up to the vindication of the grand 
truth, and in vindicating it he has to lend his support 
to the inevitable doctrine of a spiritual body. 

"'The soul,' he says, 'beginning to exist as the 
principle of life, may have the power to create other 
bodies than the physical for itself or it may already 
have formed another medium or body in the germ, 
and may hold it ready for occupation and use as soon 
as it sloughs off the one which connects it with the 
earth, . . . The evidence of observation and of 
facts is decisive that the soul begins its existence as 
a vital agency, and emerges by a gradual waking 
into the conscious activities of its higher nature.' 

"The soul which has had enough divine intelligence 
to prepare for itself a body in this world may be 
trusted to have ready a fitting substitute when death 
loosens the physical tie. If from a little microscopic 
cell, by successive differentiations, it may evolve 
man's complex organism, surely it may, from its 
higher point of being, evolve future organisms suited 
to its more advanced states." 

The theory of the creation has been studied for 
many thousand years ; and if the atomic doctrine 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 113 

was really fundamental in establishing the only pos- 
sible thesis upon which a scientific estimate or expo- 
sition could be made, its importance cannot be too 
highly appreciated. It is possible, however, that 
some may think that the world, under the Divine 
Architect, is still governed by fundamental laws, 
existing prior to the birth of Science in man, and 
which have not yet been revealed. At any rate, sup- 
posed laws have been misunderstood by scientists, 
much to the discomfort, at times, of the people, who 
find that the earth ft still moves," notwithstanding the 
predictions of collisions and aberrations that must 
have destroyed us. 

"Ninety 3-ears subsequent to Gassendi," says Pro- 
fessor Tyndall, " the doctrine of bodily instruments, as 
it may be called, assumed immense importance in the 
hands of Bishop Butler, who, in his famous ? Analo- 
gy of Religion,' developed, from his own point of 
view, and with consummate sagacity, a similar idea. 
The bishop still influences superior minds ; and it 
will repay us to dwell for a moment on his views. 
He draws the sharpest distinction between our real 
selves and our bodily instruments. He does not, as 
tar as I remember, use the word soul, possibly 
because the term was so hackneyed in his day, as it 
had been for many generations previously. But he 
speaks of f living powers,' f perceiving ' or f percipient 
powers,' r moving agents,' ' ourselves,' in the same 
sense as we should employ the term soul. 

" He dwells upon the fact that limbs may be 
removed, and mortal diseases assail the body, the 
mind, almost up to the moment of death, remaining 

8 



114 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

clear. He refers to sleep and to swoon, where the 
f living powers' are suspended, but not destroyed. 
He considers it quite as easy to conceive of existence 
out of our bodies as in them ; that we may animate 
a succession of bodies, the dissolution of all of them 
having no more tendency to dissolve our real selves, 
or ? deprive us of living faculties — the faculties of 
perception and action — than the dissolution of any 
foreign matter which we are capable f of receiving 
impressions from, or making use of for the common 
occasions of life.' This is the key of the Bishop's 
position : ? Our organized bodies are no more a part 
of ourselves than any other matter around us.' In 
proof of this he calls attention to the use of glasses, 
which * prepare objects ' for the ? percipient power ' 
exactly as the eye does." 

It is unfortunate that Bishop Butler had not once 
used the word "soul" in his "Analogy of Religon," 
which would have cleared all possible doubt in Pro- 
fessor Tyndall's mind of the writer's meaning. This 
is probably the first/ time the Bishop's meaning has 
been mistaken in that respect, or if not mistaken, 
clouded. A teacher of religion, of world-wide re- 
nown, discussing such a question so fully as he did, 
could have meant nothing else than that spiritual life 
and intellectual^ force of mind which survives the 
body, and claims an immortality beyond the grave. 
The degree of that life, the measure of the soul in 
man, or the particular force and mind when connected 
with the body, as compared to the same principle 
after the links are severed, of course none can yet 
tell. But few, however, as before remarked, com- 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 115 

pared to the millions of millions that have inhabited 
this earth, have doubted the immortality of the soul, 
or that its existence while in the body was, to a cer- 
tain extent, independent and self-operative, while 
the body itself, except in a mechanical sense, was 
wholly dependent upon spirit for life and motion. 
If the body be termed in a literal sense, as it is often 
called in a figurative sense, a "tenement," it will be 
easy to illustrate the principle, and answer the query 
raised by Professor Tyndall in regard to the amputation 
problem. Suppose, then, that the body be compared 
to a human house, — a tenement for the habitation 
of the sonl of man. In this house there may be 
"many mansions" or rooms. It may be a small or 
a large tenement, without destroying the appropri- 
ateness of the illustration for the sizes and capacities 
of the physical man. The spirit occupies this tene- 
ment, — has possession and uses the whole ; its capa- 
cities for expansion and growth, perhaps enjoyment 
and usefulness, are dependent upon the size and con- 
venience of the rooms. One of these rooms becomes 
useless ; the spirit no longer occupies it, and with- 
draws ; that part of the tenement is destroyed, leav- 
ing other rooms, not so large or convenient perhaps, 
but comfortable. So another and another in like man- 
ner becomes tenantless, and the spirit retires, much to 
its inconvenience and perhaps its powers of working 
good. Still it endures till the last room perishes, and 
then it retires perforce to " a house not made 
with hands eternal in the heavens." The loss of 
these respective rooms may be compared to the 
1 >sa of the limbs of the body ; but life exists till the 



116 EELlClON AND SCIENCE. 

vitals are attacked, and the trunk falls to decay. 
This is the precise measure of the " bodily instru- 
ments " that Science has used, and which Professor 
Tyndall thinks were so much improved by Bishop But- 
ler. Has any one denied the wonderful mechanism, 
harmony, and beauty of construction exemplified in 
the human body, or the adaptability of parts to the 
whole ? Can any one acquainted with its physiology 
or anatomy for a moment doubt that, from the mi- 
nutest molecule, globule, nerve, or fibre, up to the 
comparatively unsensitive human skull, so carefully 
guarding the throne of reason, there is the least lack 
of sympathy in every part ; or that the smallest 
jar, disjointure, or decay of one part would not affect 
the whole body? Yet the wisdom of the Creator 
has kindly provided that much of all this can be suf- 
fered without fatal effects. We would not claim, 
even, that the spirit, the soul of man, would not 
be affected, perhaps restrictively, by an amputation 
of a limb ; and that for all time afterwards, till an en- 
tire release from the body, its capacity would not be 
lessened. Bishop Butler speaks of living " powers," 
" perceiving," " percipient powers," " moving agents," 
" ourselves " ! Why not ? Is this inconsistent with 
the universally claimed attributes of the soul, the 
mind, the reason of man, as a living consciousness, 
a unity, yet not taking anything from animal life, but 
on the contrary, by its independent entity, adding 
to it? 

"The existence," says Sargent, "of a single ele- 
mentary substance or force, from which, by differ- 
entiation, transformation, and the adjustment of pro- 



ATOMIC CONCEPTIONS. 117 

portions, all the varieties and properties of matter 
are produced, is an hypothesis to which the whole 
drift of contemporary science is bringing us nearer 
with every fresh accession of knowledge. 

" We know that a very slight change in the arrange- 
ment of elemental particles converts wholesome food 
into poison. Two harmless substances, combined in 
certain proportions, can produce a deleterious one. 
Without changing the proportions, a slight change in 
the molecular arrangement changes properties, — 
makes the opaque transparent, the palatable un- 
savory." 

It is not claimed that the body itself does not con- 
tain for the time being a life principle, though an un- 
conscious one, independent of spirit ; but this is only 
an electric or magnetic force, kept up by actienic 
molecular action during the time the nerves and tis- 
sues are perfect, and before decay takes place. Does 
it seem at all mysterious that the soul of man forms 
the conscious motive power or life in the body, while 
its mysterious and wonderful mechanism may be put 
in motion, — yea, kept in order by it, through ordi- 
nary normal conditions ? Is it not possible that con- 
ciousness may be lost for a time by some unnatural 
shock or injury to the body, without annihilating the 
soul, though it may be unable to remember or ex- 
press the nature of condition during that time ? 

" Since the Spirit," says Kardec, " has by his simple 
will so powerful an action on elementary matter, it 
ma}' be conceived that he cannot only form substances, 
but can denaturalize their properties, will having 
herein the effect of a reagent." 



118 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

"If, as Liebig, Dumas, and other chemists have 
asserted, all plants and animals are solidified air, 
why may not all matter be the product of solidified 
forces, having their origin in the essence and ulti- 
mate reason of things, — in that force and necessity 
which derive all their virtue from the Divine Idea ? 
This is no fanciful inquiry ; its practical interest and 
importance are brought nearer to us every day by 
the advance of Science. 

" The phenomena here recorded show that matter is 
not altogether the stuff which our senses would make 
it appear. r The force which every being is pos- 
sessed of,' says Vera, ? as well as the form or law 
according to which it acts and displays its powers, 
lies in its very nature, i. e. in its idea. The differ- 
ence of forces is owing to the difference of ideas. 
Matter is a force, and the soul is a force, and, as 
forces, they are the product of one and the same 
idea, and both produce similar effects ; for instance, 
the soul moves the body, and a body moves another 
body. Their difference is to be found in their spe- 
cific elements, or in what constitutes their special 
idea; for instance, space and time, extent, attrac- 
tion, and repulsion, etc., for matter; imagination, 
will, thought, etc., for the soul. 

"As idea is force, and the source of all forces, so, 
if there be no diminution in the quantity of force, 
it is because its principle, its idea, suffers no dete- 
rioration." 



•e 



\ } J J 



3 


fj 


5z; 




o 


H 




cd 


3 


w 




^v- 



X 

< 









"Sc 



| S 

•05 C 

5r <c 




X> 



■■■- 



- ' i \ \\ "" 






3, -5$ 

^ E 

2 



ESSAY IX. 

MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 

The connection between spirit and matter is mys- 
terious ; and while it may be impossible to tell where 
the influence of the one begins, or that of the other 
ends, it is equally certain that they both exist. 

The electric telegraph cable is stretched across 
the Atlantic Ocean, and Ave converse through it. 
We know that the wire is a simple conductor, and 
that electricity is the messenger. Without either 
of these the intelligence which we receive could not 
come across this vast expanse of water, in an almost 
incredibly short time, although the force or conscious 
life principle would still be there. Consciousness 
exists in us as the secondary embodied agents, while 
we receive it from the great primary God himself. 
We could not act without him. The wires would 
not work intelligently without human agency, which 
shows that the spirit is in and through all things 
material. The agent connecting Duxbury with Brest 
lies like a gorged serpent, till the key is touched at 
either end by an intelligent hand, and a spark flies 
off sending knowledge broadcast over the world. 
Seemingly no force or life exists in the wires till 
vent is given to the electric spark, when, so sensitive 



120 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

is the force, the minutest line is mechanically traced, 
showing a maximum or minimum power in its touch 
that the human eye alone could not comprehend. 
So when the circulation of blood is stopped in the 
human body, sensation practically ceases, but revives 
again with motion in the heart. We may sleep, we 
may swoon or be entranced, and be insensible to 
pain; but our "living powers" are not destroyed, 
only suspended. The human mind itself is conscious 
that the body is only its " tenement," as it requires 
intelligence to move even a finger ; yet all this time 
the functions of animal life are working within, almost 
unconscious to ourselves. 

We can here safely repeat the position of Bishop 
Butler, as quoted by Professor Tyndall, reserving 
only " the spirit within us." " Our organized bodies 
are no more a part of ourselves than any other matter 
around us." Why should they be? Are we not 
daily sustained and recuperated? Are not our 
wasting muscles daily renewed by matter? Pro- 
fessor Tyndall interposes an imaginary dialogue 
between Bishop Butler and Lucretius, which adds but 
little to the illustration of his argument. Speaking 
for the Bishop to Lucretius, he says, " May I ask 
you, then, to try vour hand upon this problem? 
Take your dead hydrogen-atoms, your dead oxygen- 
atoms, your dead carbon-atoms, your dead nitrogen- 
atoms, your dead phosphorus-atoms, and all the 
other atoms, dead as grains of shot, of which the 
brain is formed. Imagine them separate and sensa- 
tionless, observe them running together and forming 
all imaginable combinations. This, as a purely me- 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 121 

ohanical process, is seeable by the mind. But can 
you see, or dream, or in any way imagine, how out 
of that mechanical act, and from these individually 
dead atoms, sensation, thought, and emotion are to 
arise ? Are 3^011 likely to extract Homer out of the 
rattling of dice, or the Differential Calculus out of 
the clash of billiard balls ? I am not all bereft of 
this Vorstellungs-kraft of which you speak ; nor am 
I, like so many of my brethren, a mere vacuum as 
regards scientific knowledge. I can follow a particle 
of musk until it reaches the olfactory nerve ; I can 
follow the waves of sound until their tremors reach 
the water of the labyrinth, and set the otoliths and 
Corti's fibres in motion ; I can also visualize the 
waves of ether as they cross the eye and hit the 
retina. Nay, more, I am able to pursue to the cen- 
tral organ the motion thus imparted at the periphery, 
aud to see in idea the very molecules of the brain 
thrown into tremors. My insight is not baffled by 
these physical processes. What baffles and bewilders 
me is the notion that from those physical tremors 
things so utterly incongruous with them as sensation, 
thought, and emotion can be derived. You may say, 
or think, that this issue of consciousness from the 
clash of atoms is not more incongruous than the flash 
of light from the union of oxygen and hydrogen." 

A few questions differing from the above (which 
have already been answered) may pertinently be 
asked Professor Tynclall, as they are directly in his 
line : Why will ice congeal in the fall of the year at 
the same temperature of atmosphere in which it will 
melt in the spring? Why will a drop of water out- 



122 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

weigh the atmosphere more than seven hundred 
times, when the constituent parts of oxygen and 
hydrogen in the same drop, if separated, are much 
lighter than the atmosphere ? Why will vapor, theo- 
retically heavier specifically than the atmosphere, 
float for days above our heads without falling? 
Why will the heat of the sun, which as heat must be 
much lighter than common air, penetrate a belt around 
the earth of some fifty miles iu thickness, and pre- 
serve itself as heat, though flowing down through a 
strata of intensely increasing cold at every given 
point above the earth's surface ? In the history of 
science, why has Newton been made to say that light 
was composed of colors, when he said directly to the 
contrary? Why is the theory of undulation, as a 
simple transmissive process, credited to Young, when 
it was Newton who first mentioned light as moving 
in waves ? Why are the corpuscles named by New- 
ton in connection only with his theory of colors used 
improperly to illustrate his theory of light ? Pro- 
fessor Tyndall says for Bishop Butler, in answer- 
ing Lucretius, that "you cannot satisfy the human 
understanding in its demand for logical continuity 
between molecular processes and the phenomena 
of consciousness." For this he deserves much 
credit. 

" Chemistry," says Sargent, " by its theory of equiv- 
alents, is tending to unity. Few intelligent chemists 
now regard the elements ranked as simple as being 
simple any further than the present imperfection of 
our instruments compels us to class them as such. 
The employment of the balance has demonstrated that 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 123 

in the chemical transformations of bodies, nothing is 
created, nothing is lost. 

" Hence the sum of the material elements is con- 
stant, and, as it is impossible to conceive a limit to 
the universe, this sum is infinite ; and thus the aspects 
so various which matter presents consist only in the 
forms it successively takes on according to the com- 
binations of its chemical elements. 

" But the substance of things evades all chemical 
testing ; and so the simple bodies of Chemistry are 
themselves only forms, more or less elementary, the 
agglomeration of which produces compounds. 

" If b}^ the theory of equivalents these forms should 
be some day reduced to unity, Chemistry will be en- 
titled to infer, with some reason, the substantial unity 
of the universe. 

" Neither the primitive cell, regarded as an elemen- 
tary form of life, nor any principle known to Science, 
suffices to explain life itself, or that power of action 
which is in the living being at all the epochs of its 
existence, and consequently in the cell. In addition, 
therefore, to the material and sensible elements, 
there must be in it a principle inaccessible to obser- 
vation ; and it is this principle which is the agent of 
life, the impelling cause of vital motion and of all 
differentiations. 

"But the reduction of all living forms to unity, 
that is, to the cell, is an indication that the vital agent 
is itself a form of the one primitive force, and thus 
Physiology tends to unity by the way of Morphology ; 
and this reduction of organs to unity may be proved 
for plants as well as for animals. 



124 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

" The unity of the principle of life and thought is 
another conclusion to which science is tending in the 
department of Physiology. Every primary germ owes 
its evolution to the spirit or idea involved. If the 
cell is the most elementary form of the living being, 
the principle of life which it encloses cannot be de- 
veloped except in so far as the form at which it ought 
to arrive resides in it already in the state of idea. 
This idea expands with the life, ramifies with it, ac- 
commodates itself to the means and conditions which 
the general order of the universe imposes ; and thus 
the study of the psychical nature of man points also 
in the direction of unity. 

" The embryo is preserved by intelligent processes 
of which neither itself nor its parents know anything. 
This intelligence is a property of the life by which 
they live. 

"This life, what is it but the pervading efflux of 
the Deiiic love and life vivifying all nature and sus- 
taining the animal and vegetable world as well as the 
world of mind ? 

M Should it be objected that this proves too much ; 
that it involves the identity of the vital principle of 
animals and vegetables, let us not shrink from the 
conclusion. The essential unity of all spirit and all 
life with this exuberant life from God is a truth from 
which we need not recoil, even though it bring all 
animal and vegetable forms within the sweep of im- 
mortality." 

Bishop Butler's work, able as it is, failed to satisfy 
the materialists, probably because behind all his struc- 
tures there existed the idea of life, aud that life-force 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 125 

was spirit. He has been eclipsed by modern scien- 
tists in his perceptions and delineations of the 
aesthetic* domain of the naturalists. The ideological 
record has been much enlarged, the domain of 
physics has been extended, till science and sociology 
have few barriers between. 

To use the words of Tyndall, "The rigidity of old 
conceptions has been relaxed, the public mind being 
rendered gradually tolerant of the idea that not for 
six thousand, nor for sixty thousand, nor for six 
thousand thousand thousand, but for 030ns embracing 
untold millions of years, this earth has been the thea- 
tre of life and death. The riddle of the rocks has 
been read by the geologist and paleontologist, from 
the subcambrian depths to the deposits thickening 
over the sea-bottoms of to-day. And upon the leaves 
of that stone book are, as you know, stamped the 
characters, plainer and surer than those formed by 
the ink of history, which carry the mind back into 
abysses of past time compared with which the periods 
which satisfied Bishop Butler cease to have a visual 
angle. 

ff The lode of discovery once struck, those petrified 
forms iu which life was at one time active increased 
to multitudes and demanded classification. They 
were grouped in genera, species, and varieties, ac- 
cording to the degree of similarity subsisting between 
them. Thus confusion was avoided, each object be- 
ing found iu the pigeon-hole appropriated to it, and to 
its fellows of similar morphological or physiological 
character. The general fact soon became evident 
that none but the simplest forms of life lie lowest 



126 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

clown, that as we climb higher among the superim- 
posed strata, more perfect forms appear. 
De Maillet, a contemporary of Newton, has been 
brought into notice by Professor Huxley as one 
who 'had a notion of the moclifiability of living 
forms. ' 

"In my frequent conversations with him, the late Sir 
Benjamin Brodie, a man of highly-philosophic mind, 
often drew my attention to the fact that, as early as 
1794, Charles Darwin's grandfather was the pioneer 
of Charles Darwin. In 1801, and in subsequent 
years, the celebrated Lamarck, who produced so pro- 
found an impression on the public mind through the 
vigorous exposition of his views by the author of the 
f Yestiges of Creation,' endeavored to show the 
development of species out of changes of habit and 
external condition. In 1813 Dr. Wells, the founder 
of our present theory of dew, read before the Royal 
Society a paper, in which, to use the words of Mr. 
Darwin, ? he distinctly recognizes the principle of 
natural selection ; and this is the first recognition 
that has been indicated.' 

" These papers were followed in 1859 by the pub- 
lication of the first edition of f The Origin of Spe- 
cies.' All great things come slowly to the birth. 
Copernicus, as I informed you, pondered his great 
work for thirty- three years. Newton for nearly 
twenty years kept the idea of gravitation. 

" It is conceded on all hands that what are called 
varieties are continually produced. The rule is 
probably without exception. No chick and no child 
is in all respects and particulars the counterpart of 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 127 

its brother and sister; and in such differences we 
have 'variety' incipient. No naturalist could tell 
how far this variation could be carried ; but the 
great mass of them held that never, by any amount 
of internal or external change, nor by the mixture 
of both, could the offspring of the same progenitor 
so far deviate from each other as to constitute differ- 
ent species. The function of the experimental phil- 
osopher is to combine the conditions of Nature and 
to produce her results ; and this was the method of 
Darwin. He made himself acquainted with what 
could, without any manner of doubt, be done in the 
way of producing variation. 

"We cannot, without shutting our eyes through 
fear or prejudice, fail to see that Darwin is here deal- 
ing, not with imaginary, but with true causes ; nor 
can we foil to discern what vast modifications may be 
produced by natural selection in periods sufficiently 
long. Each individual increment may resemble 
what mathematicians call a f differential ' (a quantity 
indefinitely small) ; but definite and great changes 
may obviously be produced by the integration of 
these infinitesimal quantities through practically 
infinite time. 

"If Darwin, like Bruno, rejects the notion of crea- 
tive power acting after human fashion, it certainly is 
not because he is unacquainted with the numberless 
exquisite adaptations on which this notion of a 
supernatural artificer has been founded." 

Mr. Darwin's theories are not now specially under 
discussion ; and if they were, it would not be neces- 
sary in this connection to say more than that there 



128 EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

is ever recognized behind them a " Divinity," a 
life-spirit force, which would always relieve them 
from the charge of self-existent Materialism. The 
" Origin of Species " acknowledges an originator, 
lying always beyond mere physical laws. Even if 
Mr. Darwin is correct in his sliding scale of improved 
organism, it does not by any means prove that the 
origin of that measure of development is physical 
evolution merely. The spiritual law may have as 
much to do with animal progression, as the special 
physiological developments described by Mr. Darwin. 
It is plain that the physical evolution of animals 
cannot be carried on without life, and that the origin 
of that life is spirit. Until animal life is found 
without spirit, and is developed independent of 
spirit force, it is foolish to strive to draw intelligent 
distinctions between the relative progressive powers 
of each in the development of animal life. 

" ? Living beings,' says Stirling, ? do exist in a 
mighty chain from the moss to the man ; but that 
chain, far from founding, is founded in the idea, and 
is not the result of any mere natural growth into this 
or that. That chain is itself the most brilliant stamp 
and sign-manual of design." 

" Even granting," says Vera, f? that the germ be 
endowed with an inexhaustible power of begetting 
similar individuals, or that it should contain, like 
some infinitesimal quantity, an infinite number of 
germs, such hypotheses will explain neither the ini- 
tial germ, nor the unity of the species, nor even the 
grown-up and complete individual. . . . The idea 
must constitute the common stock, and the ultimate 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 129 

principle to which the individual, the species, and 
the genus, owe their origin and existence." 

" Thought is a motion of matter " says Moleschott. 
But this is no more an explanation than would be an 
attempt to account for the sentiment and the charm 
in a melody of Mozart's by saying, " It is a motion 
of matter." All that Science can fairly hypothecate 
is, that thought is accompanied by a motion of mat- 
ter ; for were the head and brain so transparent that 
this motion could be seen, the mystery of thought 
would be as far as ever from being solved. 

" Mr. Tyndall," says Sargent, "would trace all the 
phenomena of mind and matter to the potencies of 
atoms. He allows Theism, however, to entertain its 
little hypothesis, and leaves it an open question 
whether atoms may not have had a Divine Creator. 

" f Abandoning all disguise,' he says, 'the confes- 
sion I feel bound to make before you is, that I pro- 
long the vision backward across the boundary of the 
experimental evidence, and discern in that matter 
which we, in our ignorance, and notwithstanding our 
professed reverence for its Creator, have hitherto 
covered with opprobrium, the promise and potency 
of every form and quality of life?" 

"I agree with Mr. Tyndall that there is nothing 
very alarming in the mild and contradictory Material- 
ism that would not exclude the postulate of a Creator 
behind and bej-ond matter. His ' confession ' is not 
a startling one, either to the materialist or the spirit- 
ist ; for it is an attempt to sit at the same time on 
the stools of both ; nor is it striking for its novelty." 

* f In our da} T ," says Tyndall, " grand generalizations 
9 



130 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

have been reached. The theory of the origin of 
species is but one of them. Another, of still wider 
grasp and more radical significance, is the doctrine 
of the Conservation of Energy, the ultimate philo- 
sophical issues of which are as yet but dimly seen — 
that doctrine which ? binds Nature fast in fate ' to an 
extent not hitherto recognized, exacting from every 
antecedent its equivalent consequent, from every con- 
sequent its equivalent antecedent, and bringing vital 
as well as physical phenomena under the dominion 
of that law of causal connection which, so far as the 
human understanding has yet pierced, asserts itself 
everywhere in nature. Long in advance of all defi- 
nite experiment upon the subject, the constancy and 
indestructibility of matter had been affirmed ; and 
all subsequent experience justified the affirmation. 
Later researches extended the attribute of indestruc- 
tibility to force. This idea, applied in the first 
instance to inorganic, rapidly embraced organic 
nature. 

" The vegetable world, though drawing almost all 
its nutriment from invisible sources, was proved in- 
competent to generate anew either matter or force. 
Its matter is for the most part transmuted gas ; its 
force transformed solar force. The animal world was 
proved to be equally uucreative, all its motive ener- 
gies beins: referred to the combustion of its food. 
The activity of each animal as a whole was proved 
to be the transferred activity of its molecules. The 
muscles were shown to be stores of mechanical force, 
potential until unlocked by the nerves, and then 
resulting in muscular contractions. The speed at 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 131 

which messages fly to and fro along the nerves was 
determined, and found to be, not, as had been pre- 
viously supposed, equal to that of light or electricity, 
but less than the speed of a flying eagle. 

" This was the work of the physicist ; then came 
the conquests of the comparative anatomist and phys- 
iologist, revealing the structure of every animal, 
and the function of every organ in the whole biologi- 
cal series, from the lowest zoophyte up to man. The 
nervous system had been made the object of pro- 
found and continued study, the wonderful and, at 
bottom, entirely mysterious controlling power which 
it exercises over the whole organism, physical and 
mental, being recognized more and more. Thought 
could not be kept back from a subject so profoundly 
suggestive. Besides the physical life dealt with by 
Mr. Darwin, there is a psychical life presenting sim- 
ilar gradations, and asking equally for a solution. 
How are the different grades and orders of mind to 
be accounted for? What is the principle of growth 
of that mysterious power which on our planet culmi- 
nates in reason? These are questions which, though 
not thrusting themselves so forcibly upon the atten- 
tion of the general public, had not only occupied 
many reflecting minds, but had been formerly 
broached by one of them before f The Origin of 
Species' appeared." 

''Let us suppose that Darwinism is triumphant at 
every point. Imagine it to be demonstrated that the 
long line of our genealogy can be traced back to the 
lowest organisms ; suppose that our descent from the 
ape is conclusively proved, and the ape's descent 



132 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

from the tidal animal, and the tidal animal's descent 
from some ultimate monad, in whom all the vital 
functions are reduced to the merest rudiments. Or, 
if we will, let us suppose that a still further step has 
been taken, and the origin of life itself discovered, 
so that, by putting a certain mixture in an hermeti- 
cally-sealed bottle, we can create our own ancestors 
over again. When we endeavor firmly to grasp that 
conception, we are, of course, sensible of a certain 
shock. We have a prejudice or two derived from 
the Zoological Gardens and elsewhere, which, as it 
were, causes our gorge to rise ; but when we have 
fairly allowed the conception to sink into our minds, 
when we have brought our other theories into har- 
mony with it, and have lost that uncomfortable sense 
of friction and distortion which is always produced 
by the intrusion of a new set of ideas, what is the 
final result of it all ? What is it that we have lost, 
and what have we acquired in its place ? It is surely 
worth while to face the question boldly, and look 
into the worst fears that can be conjured up by these 
terrible discoverers. Probably, after such an inspec- 
tion, the thought that will occur to any reasonable 
man will be, What does it matter? What possi- 
ble difference can it make to me whether I am sprung 
from an ape or an angel? The one main fact is that, 
somehow or other, I am here. How I came here 
may be a very interesting question to speculative 
persons, but my thoughts and sensations and facul- 
ties are the same on any hypothesis. Sunlight is 
just as bright if the sun was once a nebulous mass. 
w The convenience of our arms and legs is not in the 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 133 

slightest degree affected by the consideration that 
our £rreat-2rreat-2,Tandfathers were nothing better than 
more or less movable stomachs. The poet's imagi- 
nation and the philosopher's reason arc none the 
worse because the only sign of life given by their 
ancestors was some sort of vague contractility in a 
shapeless jelly. Our own personal history, if we 
choose to trace it far enough back, has taken us 
through a series of changes almost equally extensive, 
and we do not think any the worse of ourselves on 
that account. Our affections and our intellectual 
faculties are in existence. They are the primary 
data of the problem, and as long as we are conscious 
of their existence we need not worry ourselves by 
asking whether they began to exist by some abrupt 
change, or gradually rose into existence through a 
series of changes. There is still quite as much room 
as ever for the loftiest dreams that visit the imagina- 
tions of saints or poets." * 

The material law, as contra-distinguished from 
the spiritual, would ever lead the world astray by 
technical demand ; the spiritual, if taken by itself, 
would lead to an extreme generalization. Each 
of these, when acting as independent forces, would 
be imperative in their sway. The proper life for 
man is a modification of each law in the develop- 
ment of individual existence. In proportion as 
either extreme is tolerated, the mind becomes 
affected, and the life becomes co-operative in the 
resuit. It may be inferred from the experiences of 

♦Correspondence of "Popular Science Monthly" for June, 1872. 



134 KELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

life, that the spirit-forces within us are imbued with 
heavenly longings to an extent hardly controllable 
or practicable with the duties of material life on this 
earthly sphere; while, on the other hand, the ani- 
mal in man, if suffered to vent itself unrestrained, 
would soon reduce him to a grovelling, sensual 
being, impracticable in his emotional thought and 
action for any enjoyment and usefulness in life. If 
we can draw any safe conclusion from the law of our 
whole being, it is that in human life these two laws 
must be united; and so united, they work out for 
us a new existence, higher, stronger, and more in- 
dividual in its essence, and more independent in its 
entity than the pre-existing life-forces in man pos- 
sessed, and that this principle is immortal. The 
intellect of man is furnished him by the Creator as 
the great regulator of the workings of animal and 
spirit life. 

"If Mr. Tyndall means merely to repeat Locke," 
says Sargent, " and say that all that he would sug- 
gest is, that matter may be divinely impressed with 
the power of generating mind, then he at once spirit- 
ualizes matter and lowers the flag of Materialism. 

" But this is not what he means. When he tells 
us that matter may contain f the promise and potency 
of every form and quality of life,' what he means, 
obviously, is that, among other qualities of life which 
mere matter may involve, is that of mind. Now, 
this idea has been often put forth, long before Mr. 
Tyndall's day, and as often answered. By no one 
has it been answered better than by Schelling (1775- 
1854), who said of the attempts in his day to make 



MOLECULAR CONSTRUCTION. 135 

matter account for all the phenomena of life, 'To 
explain thinking as a material phenomenon is pos- 
sible only in this way : that we reduce matter itself 
to a spectre, — to the mere modification of an intel- 
ligence whose common functions are thinking and 
matter.' 

"Coleridge, who was accustomed to borrow from 
Schelling, expresses the same idea thus, and his 
words fully answer all that Mr. Tyndall has to say 
about matter : ? As soon as Materialism becomes in- 
telligible, it ceases to be Materialism. In order to 
explain thinking as a material phenomenon, it is 
necessary to refine matter into a mere modification 
of intelligence, with the twofold function of appear- 
ing and perceiving. Even so did Priestley in his 
controversy with Price.' (Even so would Tyndall 
do now !) f He stripped matter of all its material 
properties, substituted spiritual powers, and when 
we expected to find a body, behold ! we had nothing 
but its ghost — the apparition of a defunct sub- 
stance ! ' 

r ' To say that matter is the principle of all things,' 
remarks Paul Janet, ' is simply equivalent to saying 
we do not know what is the principle of all things, — 
a very luminous science, indeed ! Even in its claim 
that matter is eternal, Materialism has to beg its 
premises, and to proceed wholly on a metaphysical, 
a priori assumption. If Materialism does not ex- 
plain matter, much less does it explain mind and 
thought.' 

The w practical man " is as much the work of a 
divine law, as spirit or matter in their separate 



136 EELIG10N AND SCIENCE. 

entities. This includes all there is of man in his 
spiritual, intellectual, or physical existence. The 
work of life is this development ; it is an impera- 
tive law of divinity — man's plans to the contrary, 
nevertheless. Life teaches stern lessons, which in 
our choice we would avoid, but cannot. Thus spirit 
and matter are modifiers of each other, and the life 
beyond the grave must be higher, stronger, better, 
for its conflict with the material life here. Inspira- 
tion comes from the spirit; desire, from the impulses 
of both body and miud. Fate is not inexorable, but 
can be modified by practical observances. Force is 
indestructible, but changing, and vents itself always 
in the weakest spot. Fate has always weak points 
that can be turned asrainst itself. The vegetable 
world , while apparently drawing its life from f invis- 
ible sources,' partakes largely of the same elements 
as animal life. Matter is the slag of imponderable 
molecular workings ; spirit life and electric life de- 
velop psychical force ; and all these in their action 
unite in making a Science of Sociology. 



ESSAY X. 

SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 

TnE present may be considered a generation 
peculiar to itself. At no period in the earth's his- 
tory, so far as we can judge, has there been so much 
to constitute a peculiarly independent and enlightened 
people, either from the physical, mental, or spiritual 
controlling influences that surround them, as during 
the nineteenth century. 

That all-prevailing active principles of evolution 
have their influence, for the time being, in the forma- 
tion of the man of his especial day, none can doubt ; 
and it is only from a full comprehension of rapidly- 
chano-ins: associations which surround him that we can 
realize what he is or really ought to be. The com- 
mon laborer, the mechanic, the merchant, or pro- 
fessional man of the first part of this century found 
himself encompassed and controlled by entirely dif- 
ferent influences from those living in the Middle Ages, 
rendering it not only proper, but imperative, that he 
should find new means and methods of carrying on 
his avocation or profession, or find himself practically 
susperscded by others following in his track, of more 
recent light and experience. 

The necessary changes in the education and pur- 



138 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

suits of a second generation are hardly less, while 
those of the third and the fourth may be still more 
difficult to overcome. 

The printing-press, the steam-engine, the electric 
telegraph, and other mechanical appliances have not 
only produced a marked change, and facilitated ways 
and means of doing business and gaining a livelihood, 
but have quickened and enlarged the capacity and 
habit of thought in accomplishing life's duties. If the 
compass and strength of mentality have not increased, 
they certainly have been wonderfully quickened. 

Religious, scientific, political, and social teachings 
are weighed more by the people than ever before ; 
and although the observable results at the present 
moment exist rather in the shape of protests and de- 
murrings than in any other form, it is probable that 
positive and systematic action on the part of the 
masses will soon follow with telling effect, in creat- 
ing new and still wider spheres of active life, work- 
ing upon new principles of individual effort, — these 
principles recognizing the fact, that to the laws of life 
belong the laws of government, both of man's pas- 
sions and energies, and the more collective principles 
of aggregate municipality. 

The scientific world is no exception to these popu- 
lar changes. The law of constructive aggregation is 
recognized by the physicist of the present day as 
running from the entity of spiritual life, through mo- 
lecular and atomic conditions, to the completed crea- 
tions of the universe. Each in turn projects theo- 
ries of vital, practical forces to be controlled by human 
organisms for the development of mankind, and claims 



SCIEXCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 130 

a knowledge of the specific relations of mind and 
matter to accomplish these objects. In the magni- 
tude and beauty of his conceptions, he sometimes 
forgets or neglects the relative conditions of caste, 
through which omission conflicts occasionally arise. 

These concussions of energies happily are growing 
less, as the two planes of evolution approach each 
other. For if the artisan is growing wiser, the cloak 
of professional exclusiveness is becoming threadbare ; 
and he who would now be thought wise in his calling, 
as he may ever desire to be, is learning to throw his 
exclusiveness off, that his true merit may become 
known through his simplicity and frankness, the best 
hope of success in life. 

With the professional physicist there has been 
change and much improvement ; but great defects, 
which should be remedied, still exist in his system 
of acquiring, as well as teaching. Individual thought 
and investigation with him is properly becoming 
more a habit, and he trusts less to others in work- 
ing out his theories for the practical world ; while 
formulas known only to connoisseurs are being laid 
aside in addresses to the people, who are, after all, the 
real supports of science. 

The laws of Science are as applicable to Sociology 
as to the physical creation. The vital scientist of to- 
day is the one who sees the need of as much philosophy 
in the daily manipulations and mechanical and mus- 
cular labors of the artisan, as in the laws of attraction 
and gravitation of physical matter. With such, life is 
not mere animal or mental existence, but a leverage 
for moving the conditions of eternity ; to live, to 



140 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

accomplish is his work ; and his aim is to subvert all 
such antagonistic forces as would pervert the highest 
progress of man. 

The professional is no less dependent in his sphere ; 
for his very life — culture, experience, and ability to 
enjoy, communicate, or teach — depends upon the 
drafts he makes upon the muscles, the brain, or the 
intellect of laborer, artisan, and merchant, in their 
several callings. 

The majority of muscular forces is the majority of 
numbers, not always in the right, but capable of becom- 
ing so if influenced by intellectual and spiritual cul- 
ture ; and tests of truth and reality would be, in such 
cases, the safest standard for government. Human- 
itarian moralists often lose, if they have ever attained, 
the practical knowledge of character in their ideal 
estimate of moral accountability ; while the people, 
possessed of the better practical knowledge, may be 
deficient in due estimate of the higher qualities : so 
idealists depend too much on the efforts of practical 
men, and the latter, in turn, do not cultivate with 
emotional fervor the elevated ideas of the former. 

It may be the united and fortunate work of the 
present age to reconstruct industrial life, as science 
is being reconstructed. Certainly there never was 
more need of a union and modification of all social 
and scientific elements or of practical cohesion. The 
mere universal effort towards this union would at least 
lead to a fuller and better understanding of all the 
workings of mind and matter, the studious combi- 
nations of human and mechanical energies for the 
better provision of industrial art, the muscular and 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 141 

mental development of daily labor, and the thoroughly 
practical tendencies of the professional sciences. 

"With," says Tyndall, "the mass of materials fur- 
nished by the physicist and physiologist in his hands, 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, twenty years ago, sought to 
graft upon this basis a system of psychology, and two 
years ago a second and greatly amplified edition of 
his work appeared. Those who have occupied them- 
selves with the beautiful experiments of Plateau will 
remember that, when two spherules of olive-oil, 
suspended in a mixture of alcohol and water of 
the same density as the oil, are brought together, 
they do not immediately unite ; something like a 
pellicle appears to be formed around the drops, 
the rupture of which is immediately followed by the 
coalescence of the globules into one. There are 
organisms whose vital actions are almost as purely 
physical as that of those drops of oil. They come 
into contact and fuse themselves thus together. From 
such organisms to others a shade higher, and from 
these to others a shade higher still, and on through an 
ever-ascending series, Mr. Spencer conducts his ar- 
gument. There are two obvious factors to be here 
taken into account, — the creature and the medium in 
which it lives, or, as it is often expressed, the organ- 
ism and its environment. Mr. Spencer's fundamental 
principle is that between these two factors there is 
incessant interaction. The organism is played upon 
by the environment, and is modified to meet the 
requirements of the environment. Life he defines 
to be e a continuous adjustment of internal relations 
to external relations.' " 



142 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

The spiritual and physical type of man, and their 
evolution and development, find a correspondence in 
the molecular energy and construction of animate and 
inanimate physical matter. 

The instinct of labor-saving processes, as well as 
knowledge for utilizing life's duties and means of sup- 
port, prompts to a ceaseless investigation to control the 
powers of nature for our own practical purposes ; and 
though culture and experience may enhance or enlarge 
such desires, they are not confined to that condition 
of mind. With this instinctive ability of the human 
soul, together with the enlightened opportunities for 
experience afforded to all at the present day, there is 
little excuse for ignorance, on the part of any class 
of people, of the fundamental principles involving 
our earthly existence, and its full and happy develop- 
ment ; and certainly there is no reason why teachings 
from each sphere or standpoint should not be received 
in sympathy by such as occupy stations superior or 
inferior to any given position, without jealousy or 
envious misappropriation. 

In the normal energies of each there is neither 
haste nor waste, but constant progressive action. 
Concentrated existence is the highest conception of 
both material and spiritual force and energy, with 
all their infinite and finite mental or mechanical 
conditions of matter beyond. The human system, 
with all its characteristice accompaniments of 
physical strength or weakness, intellectuality or 
imbecility, beauty or ugliness, must have been, and 
is now, subject to the same strange, accidental 
changes in construction and condition that the more 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 143 

earthy substances of our globe exhibit at the present 
time. 

" Combining such facts," says Tyndall, " with the 
doctrine of hereditary transmission, Ave reach a theory 
of instinct. A chick, after coming out of the egg, 
balances itself correctly, runs about, picks up food, 
thus showing that it possesses a power of directing 
its movements to definite ends. How did the chick 
learn this very complex co-ordination of eye, muscles, 
and beak ? It has not been individually taught ; its 
personal experience is nil; but it has the benefit of 
ancestral experience. In its inherited organization are 
registered all the powers which it displays at birth." 

Rather might we say, in its instinctive organization 
there is furnished by the Creator a means of life not 
given to the child of man. When we ask what in- 
stinct is, we find the natural answer running through 
all the animal creation, Impressibility. No material 
organization, of its own volition, could provide the 
ways and means of life or safety shown through the 
instinct of the animal creation ; and the intelligence 
and foresight shown by them proves that there is a 
superior intelligence above and around, constantly 
impressing them to action that could not be ac- 
counted for through any laws of physical inheritance. 

There is in every organized being an infinite world 
of the most various actions going on. The forces 
penetrating us are as manifold as the material we are 
moulded from. In every point of our bodies, and at 
every moment of our existence, all the energies of 
nature meet and unite. Yet such order rules in the 
course of these wonderful workings, that harmonious, 



144 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

blended action, instead of bewildering confusion, 
characterizes beings endowed with life. Everything 
in them commands and answers with balance and coun- 
terpoise. Buffo n long ago felt and expressed this. 
The animal, he said, combines all the forces of nature ; 
his individuality is a centre to which everything is 
referred, a point reflecting the whole universe, a 
world in little, — a profound saying coming from the 
great naturalist as the flash of an intuition of genius, 
rather than the result of rigid investigation ; words 
which the movement of Science confirms with ever 
stronger proofs, while borrowing from them light for 
its path. Thus the connecting links between mind 
and matter are established, and the electric and mag- 
netic currents seem the medium of their united action. 

We assume that psycho-animal life is progressively 
regenerative, yet it may be doubted whether the 
physico-normal man has materially changed since the 
creation, except in a regular line of development ; 
while spirit may have migrated, through all time, 
from one physical constitution to another, aggregat- 
ing the elements of human life and growth in each 
and every evolution, till the more perfect develop- 
ment of man is attained. In the material evolution 
of an earth the actienic influences — which may be 
termed the soul of matter — are ever at work in 
construction of multiple forces and aggregated com- 
binations, which move onward to the final develop- 
ment, in like manner as the soul and intellect of 
man, in their own line of progression, carry him for- 
ward to a higher and more complete existence. 

Says Tyndall, " Man also carries with him the phys- 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 145 

ical texture of his ancestry, as well as the inherited in- 
tellect bound up with it. The defects of intelligence 
during infancy and youth are probably less due to a 
lack of individual experience, than to the fact that in 
early life the cerebral organization is still incomplete. 
The period necessary for completion varies with the 
race and with the individual. As a round shot out- 
strips a rifled one on quitting the muzzle of the 
gun, so the lower race in childhood may outstrip 
the higher ; but the higher eventually overtakes the 
lower, and surpasses it in range. As regards indi- 
viduals, we do not always find the precocity of youth 
prolonged to mental power in maturity, while the 
dulness of boyhood is sometimes strikingly con- 
trasted with the intellectual energy of after-years. 
Newton, when a boy, was weakly, and he showed 
no particular aptitude at school ; but in his eighteenth 
year he went to Cambridge, and soon afterward 
astonished his teacher by his power of dealing with 
geometrical problems. During his quiet youth his 
brain was slowly preparing itself to be the organ of 
those energies which he subsequently displayed. 

" Throughout this application and extension of the 
f Law of Inseparable Associations,' Mr. Spencer stands 
upon his own ground, invoking, instead of the expe- 
riences of the individual, the registered experiences 
of the race. His overthrow of the restriction of ex- 
perience to the individual is, I think, complete. That 
restriction ignores the power of organizing experi- 
ence furnished at the outset to each individual ; it 
ignores the different degrees of this power possessed 
by different races and by different individuals of the 
10 



146 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

same race. Were there not in the human brain a 
potency antecedent to all experience, a clog or cat 
ought to be as capable of education as a man. These 
predetermined internal relations are independent of 
the experiences of the individual. The human brain 
is the f organized register of infinitely numerous ex- 
periences received during the evolution of life, or 
rather during the evolution of that series of organ- 
isms through which the human organism has been 
reached. The effects of the most uniform and fre- 
quent of these experiences have been successively 
bequeathed, principal and interest, and have slowly 
mounted to that hi^h intelligence which lies latent in 
the brain of the infant. Thus it happens that the 
European inherits from twenty to thirty cubic inches 
more of brain than the Papuan. Thus it happens 
that faculties, as of music, which scarcely exist in 
some inferior races, become congenital in superior 
ones. Thus it happens that out of savages unable to 
count up to the number of their fingers, and speak- 
ing a language containing only nouns and verbs, 
arise at length our Newtons and Shakespeares.' 

" Divorced from matter, where is life to be found ? 
Whatever our faith may say, our Jenoivledge shows 
them to be indissolubly joined. Every meal we eat, 
and every cup we drink, illustrates the mysterious 
control of mind by matter. 

" We need clearness and thoroughness here. Two 
courses, and two only, are possible : either let us 
open our doors freely to the conception of creative 
acts, or, abandoning them, let us radically change 
our notions of matter. 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 147 

M The f Materialism ' here professed may be vastly 
different from what you suppose, and I therefore crave 
your gracious patience to the end. 'The question 
of an external world,' says Mr. J. S. Mill, 'is the 
great battle-ground of metaphysics.' Mr. Mill him- 
self reduces external phenomena to f possibilities of 
sensation.' Kant, as we have seen, made time and 
space ' forms ' of our own intuitions. Fichte, having 
first, by the inexorable logic of his understanding, 
proved himself to be a mere link in that chain 
of eternal causation which holds so rigidly in Nature, 
violently broke the chain by making Nature, and all 
that it inherits, an apparition of his own mind. 

"That anything answering to our impressions 
exists outside of ourselves is not a fact, but an in- 
ference, to which all validity would be denied by an 
idealist like Berkeley or by a sceptic like Hume. 
Ml\ Spencer takes another line. With him, as with 
the uneducated man, there is no doubt or question as 
to the existence of an external world. 

"Considered fundamentally, then, it is by the 
operation of an insoluble mystery that life on earth 
is evolved, species differentiated, and mind unfolded 
from their prepotent elements in the immeasurable 
past. There is, you will observe, no very rank Ma- 
terialism here. 

"The strength of the doctrine of evolution con- 
sists, not in an experimental demonstration (for the 
subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof) , 
but in its general harmony with scientific thought. 

" And grotesque in relation to scientific culture as 
many of the religions of the world have been and 



148 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

are, — dangerous, nay, destructive, to the dearest 
privileges of freemen as some of them undoubtedly 
have been, and would, if they could, be again, — it 
will be wise to recognize them as the forms of a 
force, mischievous, if permitted to intrude on the 
region of knowledge, over which it holds no com- 
mand, but capable of being guided to noble issues in 
the region of emotion, which is its proper and ele- 
vated sphere. 

"All religious theories, schemes, and systems, 
which embrace notions of cosmogony, or which other- 
wise reach into the domain of Science, must, in so 
far as they do this, submit to the control of Science, 
and relinquish all thought of controlling it." 

Eeligion does not wish or need to control Science, 
neither does it expect to be controlled by it. It is 
willing to go hand in hand with " Truth " at all times. 
Science has a right to know the principles of reli- 
gious teachers and Religion, and Humanity demands 
the same in return from Science. In some respects 
we can renounce the past, its Science and Religion, 
but we have the present, and thus the inevitable 
future before us to live for. 

The human mind, in whatever profession or call- 
ing it may be found, existent and ever enlarging 
under such influences as characterize the present age, 
naturally craves and seeks the truth. And for these 
reasons mankind are not willing, as in past genera- 
tions, to rely upon the experiences and illustrations of 
others. Each for himself desires to see and weigh the 
foundations of asserted truth, as well as to draw con- 
clusions from the relations of that truth to other things. 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 149 

There was a seeming unity in the astronomical 
theories of all nationalities, np to the latest periods of 
their development ; and the knowledge handed down 
to us by these old astronomers is beneficial, even 
though their conceptions of the truth may have been 
vague and erroneous. The epitomized record that the 
ancients have given us of personal investigation, and 
their knowledge or imagination of the condition and 
structure of the heavenly bodies, as well as their 
views of the other physical sciences, is dry, obscure, 
and sometimes superstitious, — but useful, neverthe- 
less, and worth reading occasionally while we are 
making more practical observations on the same sub- 
jects in our own day. There is, moreover, a sublim- 
ity connected with some of their theories that carries 
the mind back and upward with force and beauty, 
proving the theory that man has within himself the 
germ of progress, in whatever sphere he may chance 
to be born. 

Were he to attempt to harmonize this in his own 
career with modern science in all its bearings, soci- 
ology and evolution would forever go hand in hand in 
the inauguration of measures for human improvement 
and development. In the material objects around 
him he will see the workings of a high spiritual 
entity, that will point him upward and onward 
to the accomplishment of life's highest duties. In 
the physical sciences, his mind will at once soar from 
the material to the spiritual, and by retrospection 
influence all the stages of actienic evolution, to the 
creation of a globe or central sun. The resultant 
elements, with all their multiple principles and 



150 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

forces, will be pictured to him. Actien and ether, 
electricity and magnetism, gravity, oxygen, hydro- 
gen, nitrogen, all the gases, heat and cold, light and 
shade, atmosphere, vapor, material matter, nebulas 
— an earth ! — in all these elements, and in their 
classification and association, their uses and possibil- 
ities, he will recognize sympathetic mental parallel- 
isms whose union in their practical application gives 
him a study in which pleasure will ever unite with 
duty. 

Says the Eev. J. Freeman Clarke, " Take away 
from the domain of knowledge the idea of a creating 
and presiding intelligence, and there remains no mo- 
tive for Science itself. Professor Tyndall is sagacious 
enough to see and candid enough to admit that ' with- 
out moral force to whip it into action the achievements 
of the intellect would be poor indeed,' and that 
* Science itself not unfrequently derives motive power 
from ultra-scientific sources.' Faith in God, as an 
intelligent Creator and Ruler of the world, has 
awakened enthusiasm for scientific investigation among 
both the Aryan and the Semitic races. 

" The purest and highest form of Monotheism is 
that of Christianity ; and in Christendom has Science 
made its largest progress. Not by martyrs for Sci- 
ence, but by martyrs for Religion, has the human 
mind been emancipated. Mr. Tyndall says of scien- 
tific freedom, ' We fought and won our battle even in 
the Middle Ages.' But the heroes of intellectual 
liberty have been the heroes of faith. Hundreds of 
thousands have died for a religious creed ; but how 
many have died for a scientific theory ? Luther went 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 151 

to Worms, and maintained bis opinions there in defi- 
ance of the anathemas of the Church and the ban of 
the empire ; but Galileo denied his most cherished 
convictions on his knees. Galileo was as noble a 
character as Luther ; but Science does not create the 
texture of soul which makes so many martyrs in all 
the religious sects of Christendom. It takes a senti- 
mentalist like Gustavus Adolphus to die fighting for 
freedom of spirit. Let the doctrine of cosmical force 
supplant our faith in the Almighty, and in a few hun- 
dred years science would probably fade out of the world 
from pure inanition. The world would probably not 
care enough for anything to care for science. The 
light of eternity must fall on this, our human and 
earthly life, to arouse the soul to a living and perma- 
nent interest even in things seen and temporal." * 

The " London Spectator " of August 22, in speaking 
of Professor TyndalPs Address, says, "True, matter 
needs other and wider definitions than it has yet re- 
ceived, definitions less mechanical, and according it 
wider range ; but still it is matter, and, as we conclude 
from the tone of the entire lecture, in Professor Tyn- 
dall's opinion, self-existent. Any cause for matter is 
an inference, a guess, which no scientific man is war- 
ranted making. Life and reason, as well as their 
instruments, have their origin in matter, the idea of 
a separate and immortal reason or soul being, on the 
whole, inadmissible, though on this point Professor 
Tyndall — who puts this division of his view into the 
form of a wonderfully eloquent dialogue between 

* Galaxy, December, 187-t, page 835. 



152 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Bishop Butler and a disciple of Lucretius — admits, 
or seems to admit, a mystery beyond which may lie 
somewhat of which the human understanding is too 
feeble to take cognizance. This, however, even if 
Professor Tyndall really allows so much, is but far 
off and unsupported conjecture ; and the teaching of 
his whole lecture is that, so far as Science can ascertain, 
matter — expanding that word to include force as one 
of its attributes — is the final cause. Eeligion is but 
man's creation, though, as the desire for religion is 
one of the inherent forces of the mind, the gratifica- 
tion of that desire, so long as that gratification does 
not interfere with the paramount claim of Science to 
be free, may often be not only injurious, but highly 
beneficial. 

" Plainer speaking than this can no man desire, and 
we need not say we have no quarrel with Mr. Tyn- 
dall for the plainness of his speech. We rather 
honor him for the courage which impels him to tell 
out his real thought, and face whatever of obloquy 
now attaches — and though little, it is often bitter — 
to opinions so extreme. If Materialism — we use 
the word without endorsing the opprobrium it is sup- 
posed to convey — is true, why waste time and 
energy and character in teaching what we know, or 
at least believe, to be so false? That practice can 
lead only to a restriction of intellectual effort, or to 
an intellectual hypocrisy even worse in its effects 
than hypocrisy as to morals. That the result of 
such a philosophy, if universally accepted, would be 
evil, or, rather, to avoid theological terminology, 
would be injurious to human progress, we have no 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 153 

doubt ; but if it be true, the injury is no argument 
against its diffusion; for the injury, whatever its 
amount, is less than that which must proceed from 
the deliberate lying of the wise, or from the exist- 
ence of that double creed, an exoteric and an esoteric 
one, which is the invariable result of their silence, or 
their limitation of speech to a circle of the initiated. 
Lucretius denying God and deifying Nature is a safer 
as well as nobler teacher than the Augur, chuckling 
in silent scorn as he announces to the mob the imagi- 
nary will of the gods whom, for him and for them 
alike, he beUeves to be non-existent. The evil the 
Professor will do arises not from any fault of his, — 
save so far as there may be moral fault in accepting 
such conclusions, a point upon which his conscience, 
and no other man's, must judge, — but from the cow- 
ardly subservience to authority which marks some 
would-be students of science as strongly as ever it 
marked any student of theology. There is a class 
of men among us who are in matters of science as 
amenable to authority as ever were ultramontanes, 
and who will accept a decision from Professor Tyn- 
dall, that the final cause is matter, just as readily and 
with just as complete a surrender of the right of 
private judgment as Catholics show when a pope 
decides that usury is immoral, or as the Peculiar Peo- 
ple show when they let their children die because St. 
James did not believe in the value of medical advice. 
If Professor Tyndall affirmed that the final cause was 
heat, they would go about extolling the instinctive 
wisdom of the Guebres, and perhaps subscribe for a 
temple to maintain a perpetual fire. There will, 



154 EELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

however, be injury to such men ; and if only for their 
sake, it would have been well if Professor Tyndall 
had, when announcing a conclusion which, if true, 
is fatal to all religion, — for thought evolved from 
matter is thought without responsibility, and man is 
necessarily sinless, — at all events stated frankly what 
his opponents would consider the great objections to 
his theory, had removed at least the primary diffi- 
culty, that the reference of all thought to motors 
apart from the independent and conceivably immor- 
tal mind in man, does not, like any other scientific 
assumption, explain the visible phenomena. 

" The hypothesis does not, for instance, explain in 
any way the consciousness of free will, which is as 
strong as that consciousness of existence without 
which it is impossible to reason ; or the independent 
influence of will, whether free or not, on the brain 
itself; or, above all, the existence of conflicting 
thoughts, going on in the mind at the same indivisi- 
ble point of time. If a consciousness which is uni- 
versal and permanent is not to be accepted as exist- 
ing, why should the evidence of the senses, or the 
decision of reason, or the conclusions of science, be 
accepted either? If the fact, as we should call it, is 
mere illusion, why is not the evidence for the conser- 
vation of energy mere illusion too ? Belief in either 
can only be the result of experience, and the experi- 
ence as to the one is at least as great as the experi- 
ence as to the other. Yet as the outcome of material 
forces, of any clash of atoms, any active relation 
between the organism and its environments, must be 
inevitable free will and thought evolved from ma- 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 155 

ckinery could not co-exist. The machine may be 
as fine as the mind can conceive, but still it can only 
do its natural work — cannot change its routine, can- 
not, above all, decline to act, as the mind unques- 
tionably often consciously does. Lucretius, who 
killed himself to avoid corrupt imaginings, could, 
had his sanity been perfect, have controlled them, 
that is, could have declined to let the mind act as it 
was going to act ; and in that control is at least an 
apparent demonstration that he possessed something 
above the product of any material energies. Pro- 
fessor Tyndall will say that animals show the same 
will; the dog, for instance, restraining the inclina- 
tion to snap at food, though his mind, as you can see 
in his eyes, wants it as much as his body; but what 
new difficulty does that involve ? 

"Immortality for animals, says Bishop Butler, 
when he met that dilemma ; and Professor Tyndall 
accepts that conclusion as only logical ; but where is 
the logic that requires it? There is no objection 
that we know of, except prejudice, to the immortal- 
ity of animals high enough in the scale to receive the 
separate reason, but neither is there any necessity 
why their separate reason should be deathless or in- 
capable of absorption. The free will of man does 
not prove or involve immortality, which must be de- 
fended on quite other grounds, though it does prove 
the existence in man of a force not emanating from 
material sources. Professor Tyndall says if there 
were such a separate reason it could not be sus- 
pended or thrown into a trance, as it were by an 
external accident, but he does not prove that it is. 



156 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

His argument from surgical experience — the appar- 
ent suspense of all faculties because a bone presses 
the brain — only shows that the relation between the 
soul — to employ the theological and best known 
term — and its instrument may be suspended for a 
time, but does not prove that the soul ceases even 
temporarily to be. The electric fluid exists even 
when the wire which conveys it ceases to be insu- 
lated. His moral illustration is stronger, because it 
carries us to the edge of the region where thought 
and experience alike begin to fail, but it is not con- 
clusive." 

The Editor of Harper's "New Monthly Magazine," 
in speaking of the subject (page 132), says : — 

" Whatever may be thought of the soundness of 
the reasoning or the value of the conclusions in Pro- 
fessor Tyndall's Belfast Address, the important point 
to the present purpose is that it was the President of 
the British Association who spoke, and that his emi- 
nent position in Science is conceded. The essential 
interest of his Address is not so much its conclusions, 
as the fact that it was itself an assertion of what 
Eoger Williams proudly called f soul liberty.' Mr. 
Tyndall's real position was that, being quite as famil- 
iar with the methods and processes of life as other 
scientific or ecclesiastical scholars, he had a right to 
an opinion upon its origin, and an equal right to 
express his opinion. That he did so with eloquence 
and force, and with the respectful attention of able 
and scholarly thinkers, is another proof of that in- 
tellectual fidelity and independence which, despite 
every kind and degree of conformity and snobbery, 



SCIENCE AND SOCIOLOGY. 157 

still distinguish England, and justify the praise of 
her laureate : — 

11 ' It is the land that freemen till, 

That sober-suited Freedom chose ; 
The land where, girt with friends or foes, 
A man may speak the thing he will.' " 



ESSAY XI. 

SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENEKGIES. 

The written history of the world, whether consid- 
ered in a physical or metaphysical sense, has taught 
man very little compared with what he has learned 
from the practical study of cause and effect. The 
geological investigation of the crusts of the earth has 
enabled him, from close examination and tracings of 
its metamorphic strata and versatile composition, to 
reason back to the causes which gave those telluric 
lamina existence in their present shape. The masses 
of siciliceous matter, bones, and other fossils and 
deposits of which the strata are largely made up, and 
its known alternate rendings, tossings, and submer- 
sions, with the chemical and integral changes that 
obviously must follow, give us a good idea of the 
secondary causes of its condition at the present time. 

Had the seismic forces not existed, which have 
so metamorphosed the globe, or, existing, had not 
worked as they have, we should to-day enjoy a very 
different world in its electric, hydrometric, and at- 
mospheric sense, and know much less concerning its 
probable molecular and atomic origin. We have been 
similarly educated through the impact and vibration 
of terrestrial atmospheric energies, as well as by the 



SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 159 

examination of fluid, vaporous, and gaseous elements 
around and above us. The constituencies of ponder- 
able and imponderable ever-changing substances with 
which we have grown familiar, existing above us, 
and gliding beneath our feet at every tread, have 
given us conceptions of the actienic and etheric primal 
forces from which all more material matter may con- 
sistently emanate. This gives scope for argument on 
two of the extreme theories of mental and physical 
creation which are now under continuous debate, the 
one having a material and the other an ethereal basis. 

TTe believe that the spiritual and ethereal idea has 
precedence, and when fully developed will prove the 
origin of all ponderable substance ; and if not iden- 
tical with our previously conceived notions, will, no 
doubt, be as novel and wonderful, if not more sub- 
lime and useful, than our wildest imaginings could 
picture. These two opposing principles or theories 
have been antagonistically embraced by different 
scientific writers of the present day, who, if they do 
not convince, are certainly enlightening the world 
with their research and learning. 

We believe in science as well as in religion, and 
we believe also that they do not and need not con- 
flict ; but that from the most dense material, fluid, 
gaseous, or imponderable matter, onward through 
every evolution to Deity itself, there is spiritual and 
mental revelation to man, which becomes daily and 
hourly nourishment and sustenance to body, intellect, 
and mind. In some generations the Church has 
monopolized a great part of the learning of the day, 
but in such case religion or worship was the more 



160 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

material, — true spiritual elevation remaining in the 
background. The study of science, then, should be 
also the study of religion, which is its life and duty, 
lighting their pathway onward and upward to the 
author of all — God. 

The Dark Ages held for a time a thick curtain over 
the past, which was raised under a new order of things, 
unfortunately, however, to find human progress still 
subjected to the hinderances ever interposed by the 
selfishness and jealousies of human nature. These 
at present almost inseparable constituents, in the 
new as well as in the old order of things, gave rise 
again to dogmatism, arrogance, Saddusaic opinion- 
ism, and monkish fanaticism, — which spirit still un- 
fortunately, to a limited extent, pervades and retards 
material, mental, and spiritual progress. Had it not 
been so, perchance knowledge would have been pre- 
cipitated too fast for the proper digestion and prac- 
tical use of man and the highest development of his 
better nature, as indicated by the new impulse of life 
given to his increasing strength and moral growth. 

Before this great change, the races, with all their 
former prestige of physical and intellectual strength, 
seemed gone to decay, — a seeming death, only to 
be followed by a new birth, and a greater, higher 
work, in succeeding centuries, when Science shall 
not be divorced from Literature or Keligion, when 
Spiritual life shall not be ignored by Materialism ; 
but rather that a greater and broader comprehension 
of the laws of nature shall reveal to every soul in 
its sphere a higher existence, a universal, spiritual 
sympathy for the whole laws of God. 



SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 161 

"And now," says Professor Tyndall, "the end is 
come. With more time, or greater strength and 
knowledge, what has been here said might have been 
better said, while worthy matters here omitted might 
have received fit expression. But there would have 
been no material deviation from the views set forth. 
As regards myself, they are not the growth of a day ; 
and as regards you, I thought you ought to know 
the environment which, with or without your consent, 
is rapidly surrounding you, and in relation to which 
some adjustment on your part may be necessary. A 
hint of Hamlet's, however, teaches us all how the 
troubles of common life maybe ended; and it is 
perfectly possible for you and me to purchase intel- 
lectual peace at the price of intellectual death. The 
world is not without refuges of this description, nor 
is it wanting in persons who seek their shelter and 
try to persuade others to do the same. The unstable 
and the -weak will yield to this persuasion, and they 
to whom repose is sweeter than the truth. But I 
would exhort you to refuse the offered shelter and to 
scorn the base repose, — to accept, if the choice be 
forced upon you, commotion before stagnation, the 
leap of the torrent before the stillness of the swamp." 

The end is not yet, say the tens of thousands who 
have read Professor Tyndall's Address. An issue 
which has stirred ail Christendom has been raised 
between Science and Religion by the President of 
the British Association. That issue is still being 
weighed by thousands who look upon it as approach- 
ing very near the sanctuary of their spiritual and mate- 
rial rest. It is not that they wish to deny Science or 
11 



162 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Professor Tyndall any privileges, but that they feel 
that his doctrine, if well intentioned, will be misun- 
derstood. The most sympathetic of critics say this. 
They do not wish to brand him as an atheist; yet, 
when ten lines of his pen would set the matter right 
before the world, they cannot help doubting the pos- 
sibility of his allegiance to a Deity that he clouds 
with doubt. 

This would lead us to the consideration of the 
changes, by physical transformations, of our globe 
since its beginning, which must have been no less 
wonderful than the changes in animate life, whether 
we reason from its lowest order, or from mankind of 
historic times. 

Human progress has kept pace with the revelations 
of the past, as well as with the unfoldings of the pres- 
ent time. The history of ancient scientific research 
has been amended in most cases by new and forcible 
practical illustrations. Astronomy, as understood 
by the ancients, becomes illumined by the discover- 
ies of the present day,, and the most distant empires 
are rapidly made acquainted with the progress of the 
sciences in Europe and America. Their philoso- 
phers are in communication with our own scientists, 
and report to their respective peoples the more rapid 
progress of Christian nationalities. 

Thales, Pythagoras, Ptolemy, Plato, and Aristotle 
did their work and served their age, giving place to 
Purbach, Copernicus, Tycho-Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, 
Newton, and Herschel, who, in turn, bequeathed the 
treasures of their patient gleanings to more modern 
astronomers. 



SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 163 

The mental energies and revelations of our own 
day have been more general and diffusive, through 
increasing liberalism, than those of the past, and all 
the sciences now form each an integral portion of one 
great, whole. The universe is studied by scientists 
of all professions, and the stellar world is being 
grasped as in a span, and yearly opens something in- 
structively new to our vision of the great truths of 
creation, as well as the mysteries of etheric space. 

The sun, through the progress of mental action, is 
being clothed with new theoretic garbs by spectro- 
scopic investigation, throwing off the old theories that 
for a century have been growing threadbare under 
the watchful yet feeble eye of the more tardy telo- 
scopic examination. It seems no longer certain that 
this orb is a molten mass, uninhabited, and unfitted 
for man. 

The planets increase yearly on our maps and 
charts, and many of the old ideas of their physical 
condition have been laid aside, and new and more 
practical ones have been substituted. 

The electric and magnetic evolutions of our atmos- 
phere, and its humid and thermometric conditions, are 
being better understood- every day. Light and heat 
find new, additional, and more practical support in 
the actienic and etheric theories of combustion of 
molecular substance, and the laws of evolution qual- 
ify motors of projection and force, in mental as well 
as physical' energies. 

The theories of Humboldt, Herschel, and others in 
regard to auroral and zodiacal lights have been mod- 
ified by the spectroscopic aualysis, giving place in 



164 KELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

part to actienic combustion ; and the polar sea, the 
pole of cold, and the magnetic circle have place in the 
probable estimates of scientific truths of the present 
day. The electric telegraph practically surrounds 
the globe, and the steam-engine is doing the work of 
,nian and muscle. The products of the earth are en- 
larging day by day, and the mind of man, it is hoped, 
keeps pace with its own accruing advantages of so- 
ciology. The theory daily grows stronger that the 
stellar and solar systems, and all matter, whether 
solid, fluid, or gaseous, electricity, magnetism, the 
atmosphere, and all molecular substance, were origi- 
nally created by, through, and from the action of two 
primary and negative principles in space. 

That the sun, as the centre and primary origin of 
the solar system, through actienic forces, sends off its 
wavy, pointed rays to the planets of its creation, in 
general modulatory straight lines, not necessarily 
heated or luminous on leaving the sun, but becom- 
ing so on passing through space and penetrating the. 
atmosphere of the planet and entering into combus- 
tion with it, giving light and heat as a result. 

That light and heat, as such, do not to any great 
extent emanate from the sun, and that the sun's heat 
does not extend beyond its own atmosphere ; the 
apparent light and heat of the sun, as seen and felt 
upon the earth, being caused by actienic rays flowing 
from the sun to the earth through the ether of space, 
and which by friction and combustion with ether and 
the atmosphere by wave crests, causes the creation 
of the light and heat enjoyed on the surface of tho 
earth. 



SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 165 

That electricity and magnetism arc the products 
of actienic and etheric combustion, followed by the 
gases, atmosphere, light, heat, cold, vapor, water, 
the solids, etc. 

That light and color, heat and cold, are conditions, 
and not principles. 

That there are seeming principles contradictory of 
recognized laws, such as weight and attraction, op- 
posing gravity, evaporation, and congelation inconsis- 
tent with the thermal conditions usually controlling 
these processes. 

That caloric and absolute heat must be even lighter 
than the surrounding atmosphere of lower tempera- 
ture, and will flow upward but not downward through 
the same. 

That the present recognized theory of heat and 
light of the solar system cannot be correct, and that 
an imponderable fluid, neither heated nor luminous, 
supplies both these wants. 

That the magnetic currents are naturally terres- 
trial, while the electric are more celestial ; and that 
the former produces in the earth conflicts and explo- 
sions, as the latter does in the clouds above. 

That the magnetic pole is a circle instead of a point, 
as also a pole of cold. 

That the auroral and zodiacal lights are actienic 
and electric. 

That there must be an open polar sea of great 
depth, and that tides are only controlled, not caused, 
by the attractions of the sun and moon ; but rather 
are caused by the change of the attractive points in 
the revolution of the earth, passing the focal line of 



166 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

motion every six hours, which necessarily turns the 
current back. 

That unfixed or atmospheric colors were governed 
by the particular angle upon which the light struck 
the plates of atmosphere through which they pass, and 
impinge the overlapping, crossing, or vapor-loaded 
strata of the air above and around us. 

That cold or heat would change the electric and mag- 
netic currents without transmitting their own essence, 
as also effecting light and color, and that the form 
of crystallization of solid matter in the same would 
control the color by fixing the refracting angle upon 
which the light would strike it. 

That the planets, by the actienic powers of com- 
bustion, would be supplied by a uniform quantity of 
light and heat approximate to their sphere, whatever 
their distance, and in such form as to render the 
nearest or most distant planet from the sun habit- 
able. 

That heat cannot be strictly latent as such r bat 
being a condition must be at all times operative. 

That the actienic or etheric properties may pervade 
all matter and molecular* substance, itself lying dor- 
mant or in a normal condition, without showing any 
temperature of heat but by compression, percus- 
sion, or friction, the dormant fluids going into com- 
bustion, creating heat. If such combustion were in a 
transparent element there would also be light, but if 
hidden within opaque walls it would show only heat. 

That the actienic and etheric forces are compensa- 
tive in all their relations of evolution, passing through 
all the phases from imponderable to ponderable mat- 



SEISMIC AND MENTAL ENERGIES. 167 

ter, thence retracing the ground to imponderable 
again', but not in sense of igneous combustion. 

Our existence, to be conscious, furnishes its own 
proof of birth and connection with physical matter, 
yet the very knowledge of such being brings with it 
the further evidence that the material part of life is 
evanescent and dying, while the spiritual is living 
and growing. 

" Spirit " must ever be considered the primate and 
the ultimate, — the beginning and end of all power, 
goodness, and greatness, reaching everywhere and 
pervading all things, yet centred in and radiating 
from God alone. 

Science, unemotional, cold, and calculating, may 
approach the very footstool of its throne, examine, 
criticise, and appropriate the lights and shadows of its 
entity, as the molecular causality of material sub- 
stance ; but Religion alone, the soul of Science, can 
penetrate, see, feel, and drink in the gleams of its 
divine existence. 

Science is the skeleton of atomic construction; 
Religion is the life, the soul of its human develop- 
ment ; Prayer, the thermometric oscillations of men- 
tal force, projecting the spirit of man sympathetically 
upward to the sanctuary of its Author. 



ESSAY XII. 

CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 

An impulse of Deity, inherent through its own 
entity, created and inspired the world of spirit. 
These conscious, dual life-energies, still impelled un- 
der a Divine will, moved in space, and two imponder- 
able primary forces, with positive and negative poles, 
were created. The impact of these opposing princi- 
ples produced molecules, both ponderable and im- 
ponderable, as a result, — the imponderable taking 
their place in the higher forms of ethereal develop- 
ment, such as electricity, magnetism, and of life- 
forces ; and the ponderable, the more physical crea- 
tions of atomic substance. Molecules embodying 
positive and negative forces war with each other. 
These, ever acting within the influence of all subse- 
quent creations of life-force, — their subdivisions and 
mechanical combinations constantly moving, — make 
life and matter progressive through all forms of evo- 
lution; and thus, these two primary principles. obey- 
ing the natural impulse given at the hand of Deity, 
unite, change, or recombine their molecular energies 
in the generation of other positive and negative 
forces, secondary to their own, which in like manner 
attract one another, change, or re-combine again, — 



CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 169 

and so moving onward, all imponderable elements 
of which we have any knowledge, with their peculiar 
attractive or repulsive, as well as disintegrating and 
integrating powers, are brought into existence. 

Again, these original principles, together with 
those imponderable substances of their creation, 
move forward in the march of evolution, and ponder- 
able matter is produced. Material molecules arc 
aggregated and combined ; a ball of solid matter is 
formed, with gravity, properties of attraction and 
repulsion ; atmosphere and vapor follow, surrounded 
and permeated by electric, magnetic, and other 
known principles, uniting, changing, and recombin- 
ine in the birth of a miniature world, launched into 
existence and obeying the laws of motion, traversing 
in its orbit the realms of etheric space. 

The law of change is incessant, — the moving ball 
is without rest; conflicting elements surround and 
clasp it ; the globules of to-day become the falling 
rain-drops of to-morrow ; the crust is softened and 
disintegrated ; continued showers wash it away, 
through denudated channels, to unresisting deltas, 
where its momentary rest is again broken from the 
rockines and tossing of river currents or ocean waves. 

Heat is generated around it ; electric and magnetic 
currents charge its attractive powers ; new chemi- 
cal combinations follow at every hand ; vegetation 
springs up from its bosom, siliceous and crustaceous 
strata of different forms issue, with its additional 
pressure, producing by its frictional force upon the 
naturally-laid molecules of matter, the heat of com- 
bustion. 



170 RELIGION AND SCIENCE. 

Accumulations of the powers of weight, attractive 
force, more heat, an electric, magnetic, or gaseous 
explosion, and the crust is rent asunder, the deltas 
of rivers and the bottoms of oceans are raised, be- 
coming dry land, while other valleys are made and 
some added to the already-existing water-bed. 

The work goes on, Time always laughing at Nature 
and her increasing, changing forces ; the strata are 
again upturned, while fertile valleys and flowery 
glens are buried beneath the deep, and there be- 
come beds of coral growth and saline floral plains. 

Thus moves and thrives a world in its onward 
course, and glory of change and growth. Surplus 
energies arise, shoot forth from its attractive shell, 
escape the thrall, and rush into space, the actienic 
force for other worlds to build. Matter, ponderable 
and imponderable, revels unconscious in its war with 
matter till a dawn of new light appears. 

Motion has new impulse — voluntary, locomote ; 
the mist globules that arise from the mountain glen, 
or cling to ocean bed, obey no more the law that 
made them ; new forces govern, an unknown power 
moves and holds them ; it is animal life ! A living 
existence disputes the further independent creation 
by seismic energies alone. A new struggle begins 
and is kept in action ; generative creations multiply 
the life-forces of an animate existence, which are 
pitted against the works of inanimate material mat- 
ter. The struggle is great, the victory not decided, 
though the shell of earth becomes the crustacean 
mausoleum of departed life. 

The mountains crumble to dust, the ocean bed is 



CREATION OF THE UNIVERSE. 171 

raised to breathe from conflict, and ages clothe in 
verdure that battle-ground of created matter. A 
new life dawns, higher, weightier than the last; and 
Man, a human soul, appears. 

New life, energy, force, method, and dominion ap- 
pear on land and sea, on earth and in air, license to 
inhabit, use, and convert all that will aid his fellow- 
man and do honor to the Giver. 

The birth of worlds has begun ! Onward the 
march in regular line of orbit; order and system 
prevail ; and worlds of matter and worlds of spirit 
float onward and upward at the call of Deity ! 



Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 
Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 
Treatment Date: Dec. 2004 

PreservationTechnologies 

A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

1 1 1 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 16066 
(724)779-2111 



